Unsure What's Going On In This Hive

[The15thMember]

I'm not sure what's happening in this one hive of mine.  This hive has been very successful all summer, until very recently.  The hive has been 3 mediums for several months and I'm foundationless.  On 9/21 I did a brood nest inspection of the hive for the first time in 3 weeks and found queen cups and hatched queen cells, as well as a mated queen.  The following week I saw 2 mated queens, together on one frame.  From this information I concluded that there was a supersedure taking place, and the following week's inspection I saw only one queen and figured the hive had dispatched the old queen and was back to normal.  During these weeks the bottom box of the hive, which had all summer been the brood nest, was empty of brood, which I assumed was as a result of the original queen failing.  The foragers had filled up a good bit of these empty frames with pollen.  There was still brood in the 2nd box in all stages of development.  I've been sugar dusting this hive for varroa mites weekly since August, which has been working well, and my mite count from the dust went down from 424 at the height, to 65 last dust. 
   
This week I went into this hive and I noticed that the population was much lower than last week.  I had noticed this week that the traffic coming in and out of this hive was lessened, but fall temperatures also finally hit us, so I thought it was just as a result of that change.  There were very few bees in the top box, which is typical, since not all the frames up there are drawn.  In the middle box there were only bees on 1/2 of the top bars, the left side of the box had no bees to speak of, and the powdered sugar from last week's dust was not cleaned up on the frames without bees.  On the frames that had bees there were eggs and larva in all stages, all white and healthy looking, although there were some pupae being pulled out by the workers on almost every frame.  The laying pattern looked pretty good, most cells were laid, although the ages of the larva were intermixed in some areas.  All the workers also seemed normal, no shriveled wings or anything like that, although some of them seem to have no hair, but my other hive has a lot of bees like that too, so I'm just assuming it's because they are fall bees and are living longer.  Then, once again, I found 2 queens in the box, one on one frame and one on the next, so I must have just missed one queen last week.  The bottom box had literally 0 bees, with the exception of foragers who were coming and going at the entrance.  The box also had leftover sugar from last week's dust, and some pretty substantial evidence of wax moth caterpillars tunneling through the unattended comb.  So, what I did was removed the bottom box, took out 6 frames that had waxworm damage, put the remaining 2 nice-looking frames of pollen in the honey super.  So the hive is now down to 2 boxes, and has been rearranged so the brood is in the bottom and the honey on the top. 

So the question is, what is going on in here?  Last week this hive had almost 2 full boxes of bees, and this week there are like 4 frames of bees.  Why did the population decrease so rapidly?  Why didn't the bees clean up the sugar from last week?  Why does the hive have 2 mated queens and isn't doing anything about it?  Any ideas?

[Van, Arkansas, USA]

Member, sorry for the bee troubles.

I would guess abscond and the few remaking bees are robbers.  This is why they don?t clean the sugar.  However you mentioned queens, more than one: supersedure or swarm is reason for more than one queen. 

Is any queen present this day?

[The15thMember]

Yes, both queens are still there today. That?s one of the things that?s so confusing to me.  My immediate reaction was a swarm or abscond but they are both still there. All their honey stores are still there too, as far as robbing goes. I had a little robbing situation with this hive a couple weeks ago, so I?ve been keeping a close eye on them and I?m fairly certain there has been no robbing in the past week.

[Van, Arkansas, USA]

A note on powder sugar dusting.  Not saying dusting is good or bad, just some thought.

Sugar dusting is stressful to the honeybees.  Remember honeybees are 99 percent female and a person can realize this as soon as one opens a hive.  Everything is spick and span clean, there is no dust, no dirt, no mold, no mildew; the little dainty females are very tidy and when a beekeeper throws a handful of sugar dust,,,,, well this is stressful to the female bees.  Fact is honey bees are one of the cleanest critters on the planet.

How stressful is sugar dusting is anybody?s guess, maybe a little, maybe a lot.  I have seen dusted bees that prior to dusting, were what I considered gentle, however, after dusting turn into stinging mad maniacs.
Blessings

[ed/La.]

I will guess hive swarmed and the new queens are of poor quality because of the lack of enough drones or the weather prevented timely mating flight. I have read that queens interbreeding with her drones leads to higher brood mortality. That could explain brood of different age development interspersed. I would consider condensing hive and quick freezing any unused/questionable frames. In my opinion fall queens are of questionable quality. I am in zone 9 and had hive swarm yesterday. I caught it and caged queen in nuc. Took two tries. Boxed them and they left, next try caught the queen.  Not sure what hive swarmed but have little faith they will have decent mated queen. Not enough drones.

[AR Beekeeper]

In the "traditional supersedure" the mother queen and a daughter will both be in the colony, usually on the same frame or an adjacent one.  They will both be laying eggs and this situation may continue for several weeks.  The longest time I have had mother and daughter queens laying together was 5 weeks.

There may have been two daughters and one left with a swarm, this could be the reason for the reduction in adult bees.  The lack of adult bees would account for the lack of house cleaning in the bottom box.

[Van, Arkansas, USA]

Both queens still there.  Member, I am at a loss, Agreed this is confusing.  Sometimes bees do things that are not easily explained.  I hope another beek my have some ideas, but the 2 present queens in October throws me.

AR, good, very good presentation at the meeting, off subject so I must stop.

[The15thMember]

Thanks for all the help everyone.  If anyone has any other ideas please let me know. 

How stressful is sugar dusting is anybody?s guess, maybe a little, maybe a lot.  I have seen dusted bees that prior to dusting, were what I considered gentle, however, after dusting turn into stinging mad maniacs.
Blessings

I did wonder if the sugar dusting got on their nerves too much and was a contributing factor.  I have never had the dusting make them aggressive though.  Confused yes, but never aggressive.  I don't have anything to go on really as a first year, but my bees seem remarkably calm.  They never fly out at me when I open up the hive, and they hardly even fly when I'm working the boxes.  Maybe I just took advantage of them took much with the sugar dusting.  I'll have to keep this possibility in mind in the future. 

In the "traditional supersedure" the mother queen and a daughter will both be in the colony, usually on the same frame or an adjacent one.  They will both be laying eggs and this situation may continue for several weeks.  The longest time I have had mother and daughter queens laying together was 5 weeks.

There may have been two daughters and one left with a swarm, this could be the reason for the reduction in adult bees.  The lack of adult bees would account for the lack of house cleaning in the bottom box.

I guess this is one of those times where having a marked queen comes in handy, because I have really no way of knowing if the one queen is the original.  I know that the one queen is not the original by sight, as she is visually darker than the original queen, but as to the other one, it's hard to say whether she's the original or another daughter. 

I will guess hive swarmed and the new queens are of poor quality because of the lack of enough drones or the weather prevented timely mating flight. I have read that queens interbreeding with her drones leads to higher brood mortality. That could explain brood of different age development interspersed.

   
This is an interesting idea.  I'll have to keep tabs on the brood and see if the population seems to improve over the next few weeks. 

I would consider condensing hive and quick freezing any unused/questionable frames. \

Thanks for mentioning that, I forgot to ask about it.  As the majority of their pollen stores were found by the wax moth caterpillars, I'm concerned about their amount of pollen going into the winter.  If I freeze those frames that had evidence of the caterpillars and kill anything living on them, can I put those frames back in the hives so the bees can have their pollen back?  Or will the freezing ruin the pollen?

[TheHoneyPump]

Of the larvae brood of all stages you mention .... is any of it capped brood?  Is it nice looking capped brood?

[The15thMember]

Of the larvae brood of all stages you mention .... is any of it capped brood?  Is it nice looking capped brood?

There is capped brood. It looks fine to my eye but the workers are removing some of the pupae. This has been happening occasionally in this hive, so it?s not a huge red flag, but I would say it?s slightly more than normal. About 4-5 pupae per frame are being uncapped and removed.

[TheHoneyPump]

A few possibilities come to mind for you to consider:
1 - European foul brood.  Queen(s) lay fine and well.  Larvae looks good to the untrained eye.  Not many will make it to full term. Hygenic bees will pull them before you really see the signs in apparent.  You will see fair amount of brood, larvae, eggs of various ages intermingled together, yet a comparatively low amount of capped and a dwindling population.  Once tipping point is reached the Population crashes.  The Bees know there is a problem because their larvae are dying. They try supercedure.  Underlying problem remains.
2 - Poorly mated queen(s). Similar symptoms. Lay well.  Eggs/larvae not viable.  Bees pull them.  Population crashes. The bees try supercedure. Too late in the season to get a good queen. Whole hive crashes completely.
3 - Parasitic mite syndrome, PMS, much the same symptoms.  The Bees eventually abscond.  When they cannot tolerate or overcome a problem, if it does not kill them, the simply leave.  Only bees left are the youngest ones who cannot fly yet, the sickly, and bees that have no sense of what is going on.  NB Be very wary of catching late fall swarms.  You may be just hiving an infested colony that had absconded from some place else.
4 - Sugar dust that gets into the cells does kill larvae.  Perhaps too much dusting too vigorously or too frequently is what is killing the brood and causing them to pull it.
5 - Old summer bees burnt out that die off en mass results in a sharp and significant population drop if they are all same age cycle with a noticeable brood gap between cycles 6 weeks ago.
6 - What looked like supercedure may have been multicast swarming.  The depletion is very significant in that case.  Although it is much too late in season for swarming, depending in where you are.

.... few ideas to think about.   
I would be most focused on determining between 1 or 2 or 3 as their symptoms are very similar.  The fact that you have been dusting for mite control leads more pointedly to 3 PMS.
Regardless of which it is at this late point in the season the next move is to decide if there is any time left in the season to do anything about it or best to just terminate the hive now. Cut the losses, clean up the equipment, and make ready for restocking it in the spring.

If were to keep it going, try to figure which of the two queens is the mother.  Keep her, kill the other, because late season queens really suck, very poor.  Then proceed to treat the hive accordingly for the underlying problem of EFB or PMS.

By the way, this is classically how mites kill hives (PMS).  It is rarely those weak smaller hives.  It is the big buster booming hives that have been great all season.  Then in the fall when the bee population is on decline, the mite per bee population soars and overcomes the colony.  That big hive crashes, there is no come back from it.

PS:  At 4 frames of bees left, reduce them to one box or better yet move them into just a nuc.  Easier to monitor what is going on as well as the smaller space makes any treatments much more confined and effective. nb kill the late queen first though.  Keep the old one, she's the good one. Freeze all of the frames and boxes to kill any mites and worms and whatever else.
PS2: if you confirm 1 or 3, Better to just freeze the entire hive, bees and all, kill them all and everything in there right now.  If the freezer is small, bag groups of frames and bees together and cycle them through the freezer. Then clean everything up and have ready for restocking in the spring.

[ed/La.]

Freezing the frames works. It is only takes a few hours at 0 but longer at lower temperature. I  leave them in overnight or until I need them.  I rotate questionable frames to the freezer regularly in wax moth season.

[The15thMember]

Thank you so much, HoneyPump, this is fantastic information.  I have some follow-up questions and comments.

A few possibilities come to mind for you to consider:
1 - European foul brood.  Queen(s) lay fine and well.  Larvae looks good.  Not many make it to full term. Hygenic bees pull them before you really see the signs in apparent.  You will see fair amount of brood, larvae, eggs of various ages together, but a comparatively low amount of capped. Population crashes.  The Bees know there is a problem because their larvae are dying. They try supercedure.  Underlying problem remains.

I can't say for sure, because I wasn't thinking about a ratio of capped to open, but it really didn't strike me as there being little capped brood.  If I had to say it was probably 50-50, capped to open. 

2 - Poorly mated queen(s). Similar symptoms. Lay well.  Eggs/larvae not viable.  Bees pull them.  Population crashes. The bees try supercedure. Too late in the season to get a good queen. Whole hive crashes completely.

Would I be seeing drones in the case of a poorly mated queen?  Because there is no drone brood anywhere in the hive.   

3 - Parasitic mite syndrome, PMS, much the same symptoms.  The Bees eventually abscond.  Only bees left are the youngest ones who cannot fly yet and probably do not know what is going on.
 
I would be most focused on determining between 1 or 2 or 3 as their symptoms are very similar.  The fact that you have been dusting for mite control leads more pointedly to 3 PMS.

By the way, this is classically how mites kill hives (PMS).  It is rarely those weak smaller hives.  It is the big buster booming hives that have been great all season.  Then in the fall when the bee population is on decline, the mite per bee population soars and overcomes the colony.  That big hive crashes, there is no come back from it.

Again, not 100% sure because I wasn't looking for it, but I don't recall seeing all young bees.  I mentioned that I've been seeing quite a few old hairless workers around lately, and I didn't notice a conspicuous lack of them today.  I'm not understanding why the fact that I've been dusting leads more to PMS.  My mite load has been decreasing since August based on the mite drops I've been getting, so hasn't my mite/bee ratio been going down? 

4 - Sugar dust that gets into the cells does kill larvae.  Perhaps too much dusting too vigorously or too frequently is what is killing the brood and causing them to pull it.

Hm, I never heard of that being a problem when I was researching this originally.  Not saying you're wrong or anything, just saying I never heard of that.  Unfortunately I didn't inspect for those 3 weeks before I noticed the queen situation, so I'm not sure if the brood nest has been gradually shrinking, or if it happened suddenly.  (By the way, yes, I will never go 3 weeks without an inspection ever again.  At least not until I have lots of hives.)

5 - Old summer bees burnt out that die off en mass results in a sharp and significant population drop if they are all same age cycle with a noticeable brood gap between cycles 6 weeks ago.

I had thought of this one myself.  My concern is that there isn't much brood.  I feel like if it was just an issue with the brood cycle, that the brood would be increasing.  I had my other hive go suddenly queenless early this summer, and once the replacement started laying, the brood nest increased every week.  But these 4 frames of brood have been about all I've had for the past couple weeks, in spite of the fact that the adult population was larger before today. 

Freeze all of the frames and boxes to kill any mites and worms and whatever else.   Better yet, just freeze the entire hive, bees and all.  Kill them and everything in there now.  Then clean it up and have ready for the spring.

Freezing the frames works. It is only takes a few hours at 0 but longer at lower temperature. I  leave them in overnight or until I need them.  I rotate questionable frames to the freezer regularly in wax moth season.

Good to know about the freezing.  I wish I had more freezer space, but I'm still living with my parents, and until I get my own place (which is coming in the near future) or they get another freezer, the only freezer space I have is a small amount of my mom's chest freezer.  So no freezing whole hives for me, or even leaving frames in the freezer on a permanent basis unfortunately.  But I can certainly freeze some of their good pollen frames and give them back.     

[TheHoneyPump]

wrt poorly mated queen(s).  This does not only present itself as drone brood.  A queen that did not mate with enough drones or did not mate at all, will run out of ability to fertilize and yes she will be laying drones.  If the time of year is wrong for drones, as it is now, the bees will remove the drone eggs and larvae. They will not waste resources rearing drones at this time. Usually they will eat them at early stages, or just pull them and toss them off the landing board.  Poorly mated queen may also mean inbred or mated with drone(s) that did not have viable sperm.  In this case the queen lays fertilized eggs but the eggs and larvae are not viable. The bees recognize these and will remove them.

wrt the amount of brood.  This is now late season.  By natural cycle, the egg laying is reduced.  In some locales, such as mine, laying has ceased altogether.  Seeing less eggs and brood now than you saw a month ago is natural and of no concern at all, really. What needs to be determined is if the brood that is there is viable and is reaching full term maturity of emerging new young bees, and that  those bees are stout and healthy "winter" bees.  If there is brood but they are removing it faster than it is maturing, there is an underlying problem ( 1 or 2 or 3 ....) to be solved.

PS: Mite drops are not a great indicator of mite load. The drop can help with showing an up or a down trend.  However if you want to really know what the mite levels are to accurately assess a hive then you have to do an alcohol wash.  You may be shocked (or comforted) by the results of the wash. 

[blackforest beekeeper]

I guess the mite wash THP suggested seems a good idea.
I figure, this colony is lost due to mites. If there thte mite wash shows high mite load, kill the hive.

[TheHoneyPump]

An interesting article I came across this morning while sipping coffee.   Relevant to this discussion.  Have a look.

https://honeybeesuite.com/did-they-abscond-or-die-from-varroa/

[Van, Arkansas, USA]

Mr. HoneyPump, very good article.  Thank you for posting.  I totally agree with the contents, good for all to read.
Blessings

[The15thMember]

An interesting article I came across this morning while sipping coffee.   Relevant to this discussion.  Have a look.

https://honeybeesuite.com/did-they-abscond-or-die-from-varroa/

Fantastic article!  I'm surprised I've never seen it before.  I love HoneyBeeSuite and have read a good portion of Rusty Burlew's articles on her website.  Just must have missed that one somehow.     Does anyone know why the guanine deposits are there in the cells when varroa is present? 

 

[TheHoneyPump]

Guanine deposits = mite poop.

[The15thMember]

Guanine deposits = mite poop.

Haha.  I literally just found the answer myself and was going to post that I'd figured it out when you responded.    

Thanks for all the help you've given me, HoneyPump.  It's hugely helpful.  I think what I'm going to do is do another inspection some time this week.  I'll do a really good check of the brood for evidence of both varroa and EFB and see what I can find, and I'll get the hive down to 1 box.  I'll also do a sugar roll to check the mites.  (I know the alcohol wash is considered to be more accurate, but I just don't feel good about it.  The difference in accuracy isn't enough for me to kill that many bees.)  I'll keep you all posted on what happens.