High and rapid infestation of isolated commercial honey bee colonies with small hive beetles in Australia

Small hive beetles (SHB), Aethina tumida, are parasites and scavengers of honey bee, Apis mellifera, colonies native to sub-Saharan Africa (Neumann and Elzen, 2004). They became an invasive species and were first detected in NSW, Australia in 2001 (Gillespie et al., 2003; Neumann and Ellis, 2008). Eradication of SHB appeared impossible, because SHB infestations were found in several feral colonies (Gillespie et al., 2003; Annand, 2007). Since then, SHB have now become well established in Australia (Neumann and Ellis, 2008) and can cause considerable damage to local apiculture. In order to clarify whether SHB may use feral colonies as a refuge from which to infest apiaries, we investigated the natural infestation of isolated, commercial colonies placed in locations containing feral colonies, the results of which are reported here.