Pics of a Dec. dead out: discussion open??

[Ben Framed]

Edit: It has been some time since we had this discussion but I am thinking our newer members will really appreciate the bumping of it.. Hope this helps someone.


Phillip 

[Bill Murray]

So, I think the honey pump had some good insight here on Nosema.  In my world I look for the telltale stains, but its amazing what the spore-count can be and still have no visual, dependent on the nosema strain.

Snapshot of 3 hives over a 2 month period

 Jan
Hive 1- 5 spores (~250,000 spores per honey bee)
Hive 2- 21 spores (~1,050,000 spores per honey bee)
Hive 3- 1 spores (~50,000 spores per honey bee)

Feb
Hive 1- 0 spores
Hive 2- 34 spores (~1,700,000 spores per honey bee)
Hive 3- 39 spores (~1,950,000 spores per honey bee)

And around 1,000,000 spores per honey bee is the thresh-hold. Granted we had a lot of rain this spring, and these should be dropping in the coming months unless its N. ceranae.

[Michael Bush]

Maybe it's the Nebraska climate or maybe it's that the bacteria in their gut protects them from Nosema (it does) and I don't treat, but my spore counts ever the USDA APHIS people do them are zero.  That doesn't seem reasonable to me, though.  But they are zero every time.

[Bill Murray]

Thats interesting, I had a conversation with the person doing the labwork and they said this Quote: Some hives in the study had high infections (up to 11 million spores per honey bee)that were also not showing any signs of infection. So I personally would assume N. ceranae. Which would explain a lot for why some hives just dont do well some years and peter out. Wet warm weather in Dec thru Feb, with early building and low early pollen are the years I normally have issues with  N. apis. But I can see that. This N. ceranae is a totally different animal, it will be interesting to see if the spore count drops going into summer or if it goes up.