Any clue on what this is? Sorry no pics....

[joker1656]

Opened a new hive, from a swarm, today.  A week and a half-two weeks ago I added a 2nd deep to the hive.  I moved two frames of brood/eggs into the second box, and replaced the brood frames, in the bottom box, with foundationless frames.  Suffice it to say that the bottom deep has eight drawn foundationless frames, and the top one has two w/eight empties...does that make sense?

Anyway, the two upper frames had bees covering the frame and brood.  All looked normal until I noticed several (10+) larvae that appeared dead.  I then found others that were jelly on the bottom of the cell.  They were kind of a grayish white.  Most of them had a few small (pin-head sized) black spots condensed in one location on the blob. 

None of the cappings on the cells were sunken/concave.  I have seen chalkbrood.  This did not look like chalkbrood, but could it have been the early stages?  Does it sound like anything else that could be serious? 

Sorry, I don't have a camera that will cooperate to take the kind of pictures needed.

[FRAMEshift]

Sounds like European Foul Brood (EFB).  Grayish white melted larvae are typical.  This is a stess disease.  If there is no flow, you might want to feed sugar.  If there is a flow, you might want to do something to break the stress.  You might confine the queen to break the brood cycle.  If you have other problems for which you were considering requeening, this would be a good time. 

We had a little EFB at the first of June.  It went away as soon as the flow started.  The EFB bacteria is ubiquitous and this disease is not usually serious unless you allow the stress to continue.

[joker1656]

I wondered if it was EFB.  It is a rather weak hive regardless of the EFB.  Would I be better off mercy killing this one off, and burning the hive/frames, or is it not neccessary?  I looked up EFB and from what I can see photo-wise, it is EFB.  I just don't want it spreading to my good hives.  ???

[FRAMEshift]

From what I understand, the EFB bacterium is everywhere all the time, so your other hives already have it.  No, you should not burn your equipment over a little EFB.  It can only spread if the other hives are weak anyway.  You haven't posted pics so it's hard to say, but if you have a lot of EFB on a particular frame, you might want to put that frame in the freezer to stop the bacterium from multiplying so much. Anything that helps strengthen the hive will get rid of the EFB.