Post by: The15thMember on May 02, 2022, 05:05:27 pm
Yesterday or maybe the day before, I noticed a small crowd of foragers on the landing board of the original hive. They were kind of just standing around, a few were sharing food via trophallaxis with each other, I noticed it but didn't really think anything of it. Today at about 3:30 I went out to look at the bees and both halves of this split have a decent pile of dead bees out front, maybe 100-200 bees, many of them drones, just right off the landing board in front of the entrance. Also the crowd of bees on the landing board of the original hive was conspicuously larger today, maybe 20-30 bees. Still some engaged in trophallaxis with each other, but some of them were walking around almost on tiptoe, vigorously trying to clean themselves although none appeared to have anything on them. Many of them looked overgroomed, with hair on their thoraxes and/or abdomen missing, and few were almost entirely bald. Most of them were older-looking foragers, and several had pretty tattered wings. The new hive with the queen had normal looking traffic, although a bit lighter than the other hives since their forager force is still pretty small, but that would be expected. All the other hives in the yard look normal.
Any thoughts?
Post by: beesnweeds on May 02, 2022, 05:50:58 pm
Post by: The15thMember on May 02, 2022, 07:34:12 pm
Just guessing from your description to me it sounds like CBPV. Nothing you can do but feed if they need it. I found it clears up on its own. I always requeen any hives that show signs of CBPV like you described.Thanks, I'll do some looking at that, and I'll be sure to keep food on them if the spring flow continues to fail.
Post by: Beeboy01 on May 03, 2022, 10:32:32 am
Post by: BeeMaster2 on May 03, 2022, 01:10:26 pm
Did you by chance add supers to the hives just before this happened? If so, did you have moth crystals protecting them for winter storage.
I put a couple of frames in a strong hive in my observation hive and within hours they were showing signs of distress next day there were hundreds of dead bees in the bottom and the bees looked like zombies all vertical in the hive. They lasted another day and the queen was the last one to die. The only thing I could figure out was that I must have grabbed the frames that had not been aired out. It was very upsetting.
Jim Altmiller it
Post by: Beeboy01 on May 03, 2022, 03:55:04 pm
15th member, from your description of the bees I would think that the dead ones were older field bees who are at the end of their life span. The dead drones could just be some house cleaning of already mated drones or ones that aren't needed. Sounds like the hives are doing just fine. Keep you eyes open for pollen going into the split, it's a quick check to see if the new queen has started laying.
Post by: The15thMember on May 03, 2022, 04:31:12 pm
15th member, from your description of the bees I would think that the dead ones were older field bees who are at the end of their life span. The dead drones could just be some house cleaning of already mated drones or ones that aren't needed. Sounds like the hives are doing just fine. Keep you eyes open for pollen going into the split, it's a quick check to see if the new queen has started laying.I was talking about this to someone else the other day and he mentioned something that's a very good point. These are the first new, unrelated bees I've had in my yard in years, and it's possible that they are more sensitive to the abnormal spring dearth we've been having, and they tossed out the drones while the other hives didn't. I'll be inspecting the queen-right half of the split this weekend, so we'll see what they look like. There were a few bees on the landing board this morning over-grooming themselves, but not as many as yesterday. I did feed that colony to help give them a boost if indeed anything is amiss. I'm feeding most of my colonies right now just because we haven't had a decent flow yet. The blackberries look like they are about ready to start, so hopefully they'll help turn things around.
Post by: The15thMember on May 03, 2022, 05:39:45 pm
Post by: TheHoneyPump on May 03, 2022, 06:20:46 pm
Irritations from mites also cause alot of extra grooming. We know you know how t check for those and how to control them.
Otherwise, they just may be feeling frisky or itchy for whatever reasons of whatever they may have got into.
Tossing drones is usually weather/climate conditions (cold, wet, dearth) , or the hive simply felt they were carrying too many, or the drones had whole tag teams of mites on them and just died off.
Lotsa possibilities, few data points.
Post by: Kathyp on May 03, 2022, 06:23:55 pm
Quote
These bees look like a person would if you dumped a load of ants on them, and they were trying to brush them off while screaming "GET THEM OFF ME!"
I love your descriptions. :grin: Another thing to remember is that different bees genetically have different grooming habits. People look for good groomers for lower mite counts...just an example, but something to consider if all else looks good inside.
Your bees may also be responding to the dearth by cleaning out drones. Drones are a drag on the hive if there isn't enough food.
A small hive may have experienced robbing and that would account for the dead bees.
Let us know what you find inside when you do a deep dive again. I would advise that you not reduce queen cells in the future. Let them decide who lives a dies. It won't make any difference in the hive and you are more likely to get a good queen.
Post by: The15thMember on May 03, 2022, 07:45:13 pm
Keep checking on them periodically. Excessive grooming is often a symptom of some of the common virus`. If you start seeing hairless shiny bees from all that grooming pulling their hairs out .. you know that they have contracted something. Maybe grab a sample of 20 -50 of those weird acting bees and send them for analysis. Check with your regional inspector for the protocol.I'll look into seeing if I can get analysis done on them. I am seeing several bees with that shiny look to them, I'm just wondering if that could be caused by the overgrooming alone. I'm planning on hitting all the splits with OAV coming up this week or next while they are broodless, as part of my mite management plan this year, so it will be interesting to see what sort of drop I get when I do that.
Irritations from mites also cause alot of extra grooming. We know you know how t check for those and how to control them.
Otherwise, they just may be feeling frisky or itchy for whatever reasons of whatever they may have got into.
A little bit of a rabbit hole here, but I've been reading old ABJs lately, and I came upon an article discussing those shiny hairless bees in the Feb. 1861 issue. The article was debunking the theory that these shiny bees laid the drone eggs in the colony, while the queen laid the worker eggs. I found it interesting that people noticed bees that looked like this before varroa. Obviously there were still viruses before varroa, so it may not say anything either way, but they were common enough that people thought they had a normal function in the colony, and weren't evidence of a sick colony. I just found it surprising.
Thanks. :cheesy:QuoteThese bees look like a person would if you dumped a load of ants on them, and they were trying to brush them off while screaming "GET THEM OFF ME!"
I love your descriptions. :grin:
Another thing to remember is that different bees genetically have different grooming habits. People look for good groomers for lower mite counts...just an example, but something to consider if all else looks good inside.This is a good point, but as I said, this just didn't look normal. This wasn't bees who were a little more interested in grooming, this looked like bees who were desperate to be cleaned off.
Tossing drones is usually weather/climate conditions (cold, wet, dearth) , or the hive simply felt they were carrying too many, or the drones had whole tag teams of mites on them and just died off.
Your bees may also be responding to the dearth by cleaning out drones. Drones are a drag on the hive if there isn't enough food.Based on the fact that both halves of the split have the piles of drones, and only one half of the split and now another hive without a pile of drones are doing the overgrooming, I am pretty well convinced that the drone dumping is just a genetic thing with these new bees and has nothing to do with the overgrooming. As HP said, it seems like a response to the dearth.
A small hive may have experienced robbing and that would account for the dead bees.
I have been keeping pretty close of an eye on the splits and haven't seen any robbing, and I'm also not sure why robbing would result in mostly dead drones as opposed to workers, so I'm fairly sure that robbing isn't a contributing factor.
I would advise that you not reduce queen cells in the future. Let them decide who lives a dies. It won't make any difference in the hive and you are more likely to get a good queen.I have done this before and have gotten swarms when I did, and I also had one hive basically swarm to death. I do always leave a couple, usually 2-4 so there is still some competition, but I don't leave them all anymore.
Lotsa possibilities, few data points.
Let us know what you find inside when you do a deep dive again.I certainly will keep everyone informed on what's going on and thanks for all the responses. It's one of those mysterious curveballs bees can throw at you. We'll see if we can untangle the situation.
Post by: Kathyp on May 03, 2022, 07:58:49 pm
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I have done this before and have gotten swarms when I did, and I also had one hive basically swarm to death. I do always leave a couple, usually 2-4 so there is still some competition, but I don't leave them all anymore.
That can happen if they are going to swarm anyway. Can't tell you how many late swarms I have picked up that had one or more virgin queens in them! When you do a split and remove the queen, the mother hive is usually not going to swarm. Of course, there's no hard and fast rule to hives because they do what they do and some are swarmy from the start.
I know the advice from many is to limit the number of cells in a hive after you do the split. The reason I advise against it is that I have seen too many end up queenless because they took all but a couple of cells and those they left either didn't develop, or the queen was not to the liking of the hive.
It's a judgment thing and we all do what we find works. I kind of fall into the camp of believing the hive does what it does for a reason even if the reason has escaped me. :grin:
Post by: Ben Framed on May 04, 2022, 03:15:05 am
Keep checking on them periodically. Excessive grooming is often a symptom of some of the common virus`. If you start seeing hairless shiny bees from all that grooming pulling their hairs out .. you know that they have contracted something. Maybe grab a sample of 20 -50 of those weird acting bees and send them for analysis. Check with your regional inspector for the protocol.
Irritations from mites also cause alot of extra grooming. We know you know how t check for those and how to control them.
Otherwise, they just may be feeling frisky or itchy for whatever reasons of whatever they may have got into.
Tossing drones is usually weather/climate conditions (cold, wet, dearth) , or the hive simply felt they were carrying too many, or the drones had whole tag teams of mites on them and just died off.
Lotsa possibilities, few data points.
Thanks for this post TheHoneyPump.
Phillip
Post by: Ben Framed on May 13, 2022, 05:58:30 pm
Post by: The15thMember on May 13, 2022, 08:22:32 pm
Member, how is the hive coming along?There are still bees exhibiting the strange behavior on the landing board of this hive and sometimes a few bees on another landing board. Some days there are less bees acting strange and some days it's about the same as when I first noticed. I inspected the queenright half of the split and everything was totally normal in there, and they aren't doing this on the landing board. I'll be inspecting the weird hive next weekend to check for a new queen, and I'm very curious as to what things will look like in there.
Post by: The15thMember on May 23, 2022, 02:02:52 pm
Here's a picture of the strange hive:
And here is another hive for comparison:
I'm anxious for the queen to really begin laying to see how the brood seems. I'll keep you all posted.
Post by: TheHoneyPump on May 23, 2022, 05:15:21 pm
That is the case when virgin queens are present. The other case of lots of drones is when the hive is producing them. The scenarios for producing drones are.
- abundance. Lots of bees and resources. Drones are produced in pre-swarming preps. When patches of drone cells are being raised and seen walking around in the hives, swarm season is upon you and is time to be attentive and diligent at inspections to curb it.
- failed mating, a good queen present but she is an infertile drone layer
- old queen running out of stored viable sperm. Shot gun pattern develops as bees remove the unfertilized eggs from the laid patch, unless the bees are ready for drones; they would then develop them.
- Laying workers. Only produce unfertilized eggs that develop into drones.
Post by: The15thMember on May 28, 2022, 07:26:21 pm
So here's the question: What's the risk to the other hives if I shake them out? Based on their weird behavior, what's the likelihood that they are sick, and would just spread it to all my other hives? On the other hand, there are still a lot of bees in this hive, it seems a shame to just waste them by euthanizing the whole hive. This hive also has a TON of drones, as I mentioned, and I imagine they are already spreading around to the other hives, and all the other hives are still acting totally normal. Opinions?
Post by: TheHoneyPump on June 01, 2022, 10:35:43 am
If the bee looks healthy but were just acting a bit weird, shake them out. A day after the shake out there will be piles of dead bees on ground in front of other hives. Those would be the laying workers whom the hives have refused entry and/or weird bees that the hive also rejected.
Hope that helps.
Post by: Kathyp on June 01, 2022, 02:19:11 pm
If you have laying workerS, you should be able to watch and see more than one trying to lay. There's never just one. Brood pattern matters too, although new queens can mess that up a bit too.
Just double check before you dump them.
You can always take pics of the frames and cells and post them.
Post by: Michael Bush on June 01, 2022, 02:26:07 pm
Post by: The15thMember on June 01, 2022, 03:10:35 pm
If the bee looks sick. Euthanize.Thanks, HP. That makes good sense. In my opinion, they don't look sick, so I'll shake them out when I get a chance.
If the bee looks healthy but were just acting a bit weird, shake them out. A day after the shake out there will be piles of dead bees on ground in front of other hives. Those would be the laying workers whom the hives have refused entry and/or weird bees that the hive also rejected.
Hope that helps.
One other thing...Make sure that you are not seeing a young queen. Young queens can misfire when they start laying. Sometimes people mistake the multiple eggs in a cell for laying workers. Sometimes the workers will be trying to "guide" that new queen to do things the right way :cheesy:This last inspection actually was my double check. The first time I checked on them expecting a queen I saw a few cells with two eggs or eggs on the wall, and this inspection I saw more, not less, so I'm pretty convinced they are too far gone. Although I will probably give them a cursory inspection when I go to shake them out, just to triple check, because I'm just that kind of person.
If you have laying workerS, you should be able to watch and see more than one trying to lay. There's never just one. Brood pattern matters too, although new queens can mess that up a bit too.
Just double check before you dump them.
You can always take pics of the frames and cells and post them.
Post by: beesnweeds on June 01, 2022, 03:23:54 pm
Post by: Kathyp on June 02, 2022, 12:24:09 am
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This last inspection actually was my double check.
I don't know if you have ever shaken out a hive. The first one I did was comical and I was glad no one was watching. Long story short, I took nothing with me for the empty frames and nothing to cover the box between shaking frames. I ended up in a field of ticked off bees that just kept going back into the box and onto the frames. So, an empty box, and a couple of towels later... :grin:
Anyway, keep us updated.
Post by: The15thMember on June 02, 2022, 11:12:40 am
In a large apiary shaking out a laying worker hive is probably no big deal but in a small apiary it is. It causes unnecessary stress on your other hives and potentially spreading a disease. The other hives will be fighting them off when they could be focused on foraging. Just shake them over a tub of soapy water. It may seem like a waste but when you see all the dead bees in front of your healthy hives it's hardly worth it. They are old bees and drones anyway.I hear what you are saying, but if they aren't sick, I'd much rather not waste them. On top of that I'd actually rather let the drones go, since this hive's queen mother is a great queen, and if they are carrying her genes, all the better if they'll mate with my other new queens.
I don't know if you have ever shaken out a hive. The first one I did was comical and I was glad no one was watching. Long story short, I took nothing with me for the empty frames and nothing to cover the box between shaking frames. I ended up in a field of ticked off bees that just kept going back into the box and onto the frames. So, an empty box, and a couple of towels later... :grin:I have done a shake out one other time, but the hive was very small. I've never done a hive this large. My plan is to do one box at a time from the bottom up (that way the bees won't just all end up in the box on the stand), and hopefully I can put the empty boxes in my garage so they don't just find them and get right back in. It'll be a process for sure.
Anyway, keep us updated.
Post by: TheHoneyPump on June 02, 2022, 05:26:43 pm
The shake out, ousts the misfits and uses the bees in the apiary to sort them. It is the least work for the beekeeper and most effective at dealing with any hive condition that pushing the reset button is the best option.
Take the hive apart, right down to the grass, boxes stand everything so they have nothing to come back to. Take the boxes 20-50 yards away. Dump the frames out on the ground, set the emptied box 3-4 big steps away. shake off and brush off the frames and put back jnto the box(es). Put the emptied equipment into storage until it is readied to be used again. Thats it. The bees will aimlessly fly around for awhile. The good queenrite bees will sort out the misfits over the next 24-36 hours. The non contributors will be rejected and unceremoniously tossed off the landing board(s).
It is all fixed rather quickly and effortlessly.
Let the experts (the bees) do the work. The bees that should be saved, will be saved. The bees that should not, will not.
Post by: The15thMember on June 02, 2022, 07:33:05 pm
Post by: TheHoneyPump on June 03, 2022, 03:42:29 am
