Wax Moths

A club member battles wax moths
Well, I was anticipating trouble with wax moths in the coming winter months, but never dreamed it would hit so soon. I opened one of my hives today and it was ravaged with little worms, cobweb looking stuff, chewed up comb, etc. etc.!! The bees were just busy working like the larva wasn't even there. We have noticed an ever decreasing bee population over the past month or so, and have been feeding them, but to no avail.
So my question is what to do now? My other hive is going strong with no sign of wax moths. Should I put the bees in with my strong hive? How can I salvage what's left of my comb. What to do with all the honey we left on that hive? I used apistan for the past six weeks so we cannot harvest it. Have you had any experience with this?
Any suggestions you have would be very much appreciated.

Thank you as always for your help,

KEN'S RESPONSE

 

Pull the good frames of comb, honey & brood and put them in a separate hive body. Look for any wax moth larva that may be crawling around on the comb and cocoons that may have been deposited around the corners and in any crevice and destroy them.

Put the hive body and bees on the good colony using a sheet of newspaper when joining them.

Take the remaining frames out of the hives and kill the moth larva and leave the frames under a carport or barn after brushing off the bees so they will not try to defend the frames.

The bees will move the honey to the good colony.

The workers will drift off and move to the other colony or they will die.

If you don’t have enough good frames to fill up a hive body add some new frames with foundation or after a few days put the good frames in places in the good colony that have frames that have not been drawn out.

So you will go through the winter with a 3 hive body colony but you will salvage the frames of drawn comb and some of the bees.

When the bees have pulled the honey out of the bad frames then clean up the frames by scraping the foundation off or out and burn it and put the frames in the freezer for a few days to kill the larva that may be in the holes the moth larva chewed.

 

After a few days at zero take them out and put new foundation on when you can.