Small Hive Beetles- First Sighting

[Update in 2018- the following is entirely incorrect- the state entomologist, Dr. Chris Looney, identified these as a similar sap beetle, but of a different, and most likely benign species. Still- I keep this active as others may think the same on finding it- there is not lay person's information on this more obscure beetle on the internet- so easy to misidentify. Thank you to Dr. Looney for taking the time to I.D. this]

They're here.

SHB pushing up a cover slip to get out- which it was able to do. Note clubbed
antennae at left.

With beekeeping, and maybe with everything,  if its not one thing, its something else. Struggling with mites and Nosema, I just found a hive invaded by Small Hive Beetles. Panic.

When I read through Bee Culture and American Bee Journal, or look in my bee books, I usually skip over the parts on the Small Hive Beetle (SHB, and the S is unnecessary, there isn't a Large one - yet), as something that will never happen here, and something, like Fire Ants, that people further south have to deal with. I just don't have time to read all of it, and it looks really bad.

Unfortunately, this past week, I found them in one of my hives. Not a lot of them, and in a weak nuc, but feeding off a pollen patty and scurrying about. They run pretty quickly, but I gathered a bunch up and brought them back to look under the scope.

There are a few beetles that are in hives that are harmless and can be easily confused with the SHB, and I wasn't quite sure which was which (all of which I have learned this past week).

I had both. Below (and the first image) is the SHB. This one's a living specimen, which you can tell as its clubbed antennae is extended (it folds back when they die and is hard to see). They are small, but bigger and rounder than the other beetle, which is called a Sap Beetle. SHBs are about a quarter inch long (5.7 mm or so). Sap Beetles are more like 4 mm long (see below).

Small Hive Beetle- on green as I had this idea I could photoshop out the background like a green screen, but I couldn't. 

I don't really get how they found me and my hives. Although part of the answer is that they are really good flyers- and in catching them, or when they fall on their backs, I see that they are quick to shoot their wings out and take off. So they could have come from a long ways off I guess. Tracking down that one little nuc.  Maybe I brought them in with a package, but I sort of suspect that they came in with the hives that Seattle beekeepers bring in for the summer across the river- who knows where those hives have been or where they keep them, and there seem to be a lot of them. But I don't really know.

Below is a dead SHB on its back next to a dead Sap Beetle (I froze them). The scale is in 0.5 mm's, so you can see the length is just under 6 mm. There is a ton of excellent information on the web about them, and also a number of bulletins from Oregon, Washington, and B.C. to warn beekeepers about them and to encourage them to be stopped at the borders. As they can fly, I don't quite see how that is going to work.

The devastation that the beetle causes is not from the adult, but like the wax moth, from the larva. I haven't seen it, and hope I never will, but maybe that's inevitably going to happen. It looks really gross- slimy, with worms. Which is pretty much the definition of gross.

Possibly this is all a fluke, and our winters will kill them off. I don't know what the official word is on this, though I have been told that B.C. has had problems- and their winters are certainly worse.

Below is the sap beetle- of which there were lots in hives- but apparently, these beetles don't lay eggs in the hive. They are longer and thinner, and smaller, and there are a ton of species. Also good fliers. More like how a beetle should be. 

This is a combined photo of ten or so shots of the
beetle, as its hard to focus on the whole thing. Not perfect,
but better than just one shot.