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Author Topic: 11 of 11 hives on trailer dead  (Read 6973 times)

Offline BeeMaster2

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11 of 11 hives on trailer dead
« on: December 05, 2017, 05:34:23 pm »
Spent the day inspecting my hives that I had on my trailer. Yesterday I came by this site to pick up a small hive for doing a Trapout on top of a chimney. As soon as
I arrived I noticed that only the smallest hive had any activity. When I opened that hive at the Trapout site there was only a baseball size ball of bees.
I returned today to verify my suspicions. I inspected 7 of them. One has nothing but house bees, 2 boxes of honey, some capped brood, a few wet larvae and a little bit of eggs. No Q found.
The rest have some honey with some very small SHB larvae, lots of pollen, a little bit of wax moth larvae. The bottoms under of most of the hives were very clean, surprisingly so considering these hives have been strapped down on this trailer for at least 2 months. Some have a few dead day old hatched bees.
I'm am writing this while waiting for the bee inspector to arrive.
😥
Jim
Democracy is 2 wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote.
Ben Franklin

Offline iddee

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Re: 11 of 11 hives on trailer dead
« Reply #1 on: December 05, 2017, 05:45:37 pm »
 :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry:
"Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me . . . Anything can happen, child. Anything can be"

*Shel Silverstein*

Offline paus

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Re: 11 of 11 hives on trailer dead
« Reply #2 on: December 05, 2017, 06:12:15 pm »
that is scary

Van, Arkansas, USA

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Re: 11 of 11 hives on trailer dead
« Reply #3 on: December 05, 2017, 07:01:58 pm »
Oh Man,,,,,,,,, Jim, I am so sorry.  How can this happen to such an experience Beek.  I realize if this can happen to you, then,  I am worried,,,,,, I am worried about the rest of us.

Keep us informed.  Man o Man, the entire trailer of seven hives.  I hate hearing the loss of hives, just hate it.  May the rest of your hives go through winter and enter Spring, just a buzzing.
Blessings

Van, Arkansas, USA

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Re: 11 of 11 hives on trailer dead
« Reply #4 on: December 05, 2017, 07:08:17 pm »
Eleven hives,    Not seven, auto correct can be a pain.

Offline HillBilly2

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Re: 11 of 11 hives on trailer dead
« Reply #5 on: December 05, 2017, 07:50:45 pm »
Try to get your inspector to take a sample of bees from the remaining hive to send off. Commercial beekeeper near me said he had a few confirmed cases of tracheal mites in the last month or two. Symptoms were just what you describe.

Van, Arkansas, USA

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Re: 11 of 11 hives on trailer dead
« Reply #6 on: December 05, 2017, 08:02:48 pm »
tracheal mites:  I would expect lethargic (tired, no energy) crawling bees and dead bees on bottom of the hive.  I am by no means a disease expert of honey bees.

Offline jtcmedic

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Re: 11 of 11 hives on trailer dead
« Reply #7 on: December 05, 2017, 08:44:58 pm »
This is a puzzle. Wow sorry to hear this .

Offline BeeMaster2

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Re: 11 of 11 hives on trailer dead
« Reply #8 on: December 05, 2017, 09:40:37 pm »
The bee inspector, Rob, said that he thought it was a virus of some kind due to a mite overload. There was no sign of mites under any of the hives. He said that he had the same thing happen to him last year. He had about 14 hives on a trailer and every couple of days he lost 3 or 4 hives until they were all dead. He also did not treat.  I had him do an alcohol wash on the one hive that had some bees in the brood area. We counted 14 mites out of about 100 bee sample. That is 14%, pretty high.  Rob now pushes treating bees. 
Jim
Democracy is 2 wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote.
Ben Franklin

Offline beepro

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Re: 11 of 11 hives on trailer dead
« Reply #9 on: December 05, 2017, 11:26:51 pm »
This is very sad :(
I suppose that you did not treat them?

I had this experience 3 years ago. A hive crashed situation without having a
method of removing the mites back then.  It was during an early Spring build up.

For the tf hives, I have a method of removing the mites (IPM) and allow the big fat winter
bees to build up.  Without using any chemical treatment I have to manually removed the
cap brood frames after the hives are in their winter brood nest configuration. This is the only way that the hive can survive without having too many bee diseases affecting them.

A reduced brood nest size is the best time to remove the mites from my 3 seasons of running small test. Without removing the cap broods even when they can survive through this winter, the early Spring build up will kill a hive.  Some will give an early Spring treatment but since I don't treat, I like to take out the mites so that early Spring build up will not be affected.  The mites can spread their nasty disease to kill off the winter bees if not clean up before or during the winter time on good weather.  The small nuc hive with the heater on have zero mite now because I had removed them all back in September.  My next option is to source the tf queens from tf apiary to find more resistant bees. Because your bee environment is similar to mine, repeating this method of IPM should not be a big issue.  The only issue is having enough time to remove the mites before they crash your hives.  In a tracheal mite infection not all bees are dead.  They look like a normal bee but they cannot fly!  The bees that are still alive will not die inside the hive.  Many will crawl outside to die on the ground.  They don't want to further spread this disease inside. So would rather die outside instead.  That is how honey bees do it.

Offline paus

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Re: 11 of 11 hives on trailer dead
« Reply #10 on: December 06, 2017, 12:16:02 am »
I am trying not use any kind of chemical in my hives. I saw an ad that touts ultra sound to kill mites.  There is a lot of work going on that claims to be able to use frequency, wave shape and intensity to selectively kill pest.  I have been approached by an engineer/inventor to experiment to control SHB.  All this is new to me anyone else heard of this

Offline beepro

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Re: 11 of 11 hives on trailer dead
« Reply #11 on: December 06, 2017, 01:09:05 am »
I saw on the evening news that using the ultra sound to control the dog's barking will also
have a negative effect on the teenagers.   Somehow teenager's brains are more likely to be
affected by using these devices.   So evaluate before using them if there are teenagers around you or your
neighbor's house.   The owner has to take down this device after the neighbor complaint.  Not sure how the dog responded after
removing the device.   Affecting the human brain is not good!

Offline BeeMaster2

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Re: 11 of 11 hives on trailer dead
« Reply #12 on: December 06, 2017, 10:00:38 am »
I am trying not use any kind of chemical in my hives. I saw an ad that touts ultra sound to kill mites.  There is a lot of work going on that claims to be able to use frequency, wave shape and intensity to selectively kill pest.  I have been approached by an engineer/inventor to experiment to control SHB.  All this is new to me anyone else heard of this
It is very difficult to kill a bug on a bug without killing both bugs. What ever we do will affect both insects to some degree.
I wonder is the ultra sound can be set so that only the smaller bug is affected. Sounds possible.
Jim
Democracy is 2 wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote.
Ben Franklin

Offline paus

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Re: 11 of 11 hives on trailer dead
« Reply #13 on: December 06, 2017, 10:20:35 am »
My friend says that he takes the "bug" and tries different freq. and wave shapes in his laboratory so that only that general size and characteristics of target are effected.  He also said he needed some bees so he could stay from harmful exposure  to the bees. 

Offline jimineycricket

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Re: 11 of 11 hives on trailer dead
« Reply #14 on: December 06, 2017, 10:40:14 am »
We have a gentleman in our bee club who bought one of these sound frequency devices out of Europe when it was still fairly new.  He is very satisfied with it, but is still testing its performance in different conditions.
jimmy

Offline Acebird

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Re: 11 of 11 hives on trailer dead
« Reply #15 on: December 06, 2017, 12:38:43 pm »
Oh wow, sorry for your luck Jim.  Any chance the move had anything to do with it?  Funny that you wouldn't see evidence of a virus in any hives.  How long have they been sitting is this location?
Brian Cardinal
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Offline jtcmedic

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Re: 11 of 11 hives on trailer dead
« Reply #16 on: December 06, 2017, 01:00:46 pm »
Same questions I had , and did it get cold up ther last week when it rained? It did in Central Florida

Offline BeeMaster2

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Re: 11 of 11 hives on trailer dead
« Reply #17 on: December 06, 2017, 02:22:14 pm »
Oh wow, sorry for your luck Jim.  Any chance the move had anything to do with it?  Funny that you wouldn't see evidence of a virus in any hives.  How long have they been sitting is this location?
Thanks Brian.
I do not think the move had anything to do with it. They were at this site for over 2 months. I saw them about 2 weeks ago and they had normal entrance activity. A month ago they were all very strong hives.
Jim
Democracy is 2 wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote.
Ben Franklin

Offline BeeMaster2

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Re: 11 of 11 hives on trailer dead
« Reply #18 on: December 06, 2017, 02:24:50 pm »
Same questions I had , and did it get cold up ther last week when it rained? It did in Central Florida
It wasn't cold enough to affect these hives. My observation hive, with 2 frames of bees is doing just fine. I have 2 frames in town that I need to check on.

Jim
Democracy is 2 wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote.
Ben Franklin

Van, Arkansas, USA

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Re: 11 of 11 hives on trailer dead
« Reply #19 on: December 06, 2017, 02:43:24 pm »
{Funny that you wouldn't see evidence of a virus in any hives.}

Ace:  I had 18 hives last August, 2 of the 18 hives displayed deformed Wing virus.  One month later, last September, same 2 hives absconded.  Not much left behind but a little bit of honey, mites and pollen.

Now I cannot say why the bees absconded.  But I can say the only 2 hives displaying DWV took off.  A connection, I?ll never know for sure.
Blessings