The small hive beetle (SHB) *Aethina tumida* is an opportunistic parasite that feeds on bee larvae, honey, and pollen. To identify sets of beetle microbes and the transmission of microbes from bees to beetles, a metagenomic analysis was performed. We identified sets of herbivore‐associated bacteria, as well as typical bee symbiotic bacteria for pollen digestion, in SHB larvae and adults. Microbes found from Illumina DNA reads using Kraken include DNA reads aligned to HoloBee Bar database report, adult beetle microbe qPCR results from DNA extraction, adult beetle de novo assembled contig_names, larvae beetle Pacbio_reads.