Need Help – Pasadena Hive / Small Hive Beetle

Allen—you are wise to continue to have reservations about the neglect of inspections on this hive. Installed in May, they should have built up quite well by now to occupy the deep box with brood. You do not say how you acquired them—cutout or swarm? Cutouts can go crooked pretty fast because the framed up combs can shift out of alignment, and start a unworkable pattern for the beek. The bees don’t care but it makes it impossible for you.
We have a lot of members in your area and surrounding areas—Silverlake, Echo Park, Altadena, Pasadena—more than in my South Bay area, by far. Getting a mentor from the beginning is VERY important, so keep pushing. If no one turns up, let me know and I will press a bit. I will urge you to compensate your teacher, as this valuable work is not without burden for the mentor. I charge $85 to come out and stay as long as the newbee needs me. Then I stay in touch by phone or email.
The presence of Small Hive Beetles is usually a sign of some underlying stress—it is not THE CAUSE of problems in the hive. It is a symptom, in others words, of other issues related to disease stress, food stress, queen problems. None of these issues can be assessed without a full inspection. When a new hive is installed, I have a look at how they are doing within 5 days. If all is well, the bees are coating the brood combs and going about their business calmly. If something is not right, I have a chance to assess and figure out a remedy. One of the main issues I have seen in my mentoring is the reticence of newbees to get into the hive right away. It is not enough to look at the traffic going in and out. If all is right with the colony, your looking inside the hive body is not going to drive them off.
Let us know if you get help. Call me if you want Susan
310-374-4779

Allen—it is very important to get the combs out of the hive and into a freezer right away. This will kill any hive moth eggs, larvae, and small hive beetles and larvae. These drawn combs are really good stuff for establishing a swarm or boosting the laying area for a small cutout. SHB and HM both have eggs hanging around in even the biggest hives so the freezing operation stops that process from making the left-behind combs into a mess of frass and webbing. Also, if there are any pollen or honey stores in the combs, all the better. Target is now selling a clear plastic crate with a spongy gasket, so the lid fits tightly. The storage of these frames must be really tight or the moths will find them. So don’t store them outside or in a shed. (by the way, a “deep super” is a hive body on top of a stack–“super” means above. Your brood box is going to be a deep, from the description of what you started with before.)
From what you said earlier, you may have to cut apart the combs/frames to disentangle them. Do this carefully, and use some rubber bands if the combs need retention support to stay in the frames. These “fixed up” combs can be put into a hive with a colony and the bees will repair the wax and detach and throw out the bands eventually.
If I were you, I would work at getting your mentor lined up now, before you are in a tight spot. Our next meeting is in a couple weeks. You can announce there. But you can also offer to pay a mentor and may attract more help that way. We have very few mentors and many more newbees, so the whole teaching burden falls on just a few folks.