Va. honey bee colonies increasing, deaths continue

[bwallace23350]

http://wtop.com/virginia/2017/08/va-honey-bee-colonies-increasing-deaths-continue/

WASHINGTON ? The number of honey bee colonies in Virginia is increasing, but staggering death rates continue to plague and confound beekeepers and farmers.

?The number of honey bee colonies in Virginia is up 23 percent from 2016,? said Elaine Lidholm, director of communications for the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

The increase can be attributed to more businesses caring for honey bee colonies, rather than bees becoming heartier.

Colony collapse disorder, described by the Environmental Protection Agency as ?the phenomenon that appears when the majority of worker bees in a colony disappear and leave behind a queen, plenty of food and a few nurse bees to care for the remaining immature bees and the queen,? continues to kill almost a third of the hives.


One thing that has struck me is that in this article is about bee becoming heartier. I managed to get a hive that was left over from when someone moved. A person bought the property and the hive had been sitting on the property for a couple years. The property butted up to ours and I basically moved it over the fence line. Best we can tell is that this hive has been untouched for 8 years or so. The man was known to keep bees but this was the only hive out there. No other boxes no other equipment but one hive. No one in the area claimed the hive. So my question is how and why did this hive survive? They are a brownish yellow colour and not mean but more aggressive than my other hives have ever been.

[BeeMaster2]

Your hive was able to select a queen with the genetics to be able to detect and remove mites and handle the viruses that they carry as well as the small hive beetles and moths.
That is a good thing.
Jim

[Eric Bosworth]

Your hive was able to select a queen with the genetics to be able to detect and remove mites and handle the viruses that they carry as well as the small hive beetles and moths.
That is a good thing.
Jim

Jim is right. More than that, I think the treatment of bees to prevent diseases has caused things like CCD. I would even go so far as to say CCD is political correctness for bees dying of pesticides either inside or outside of the hive.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N910A using Tapatalk

[Van, Arkansas, USA]

Mr. Eric, those are two beautiful German shorthair pointers that you have pictured.  Just beautiful dogs they are.

I agree pesticides have taken their toll on the bees.  And SOME on the inside of the hive.  I am NOT saying all treatment of bees are negative, just some.
Blessings

[paus]

I won't get to sleep early tonight.  The inert gas has opened a whole new line of thought.  What about a little dry ice in the bottom of a chest freezer full of frames?  Which ever way is more economical, this seems better than the non naptha moth balls. 

[CrazyTalk]

. So my question is how and why did this hive survive? They are a brownish yellow colour and not mean but more aggressive than my other hives have ever been.

What makes you think they did survive? An empty hive with a whole bunch of comb is an awfully inviting target for an early spring swarm.

CCD pretty much exactly tracks the movement of varroa across the globe. Its varroa, and the viruses it spreads. You have a nice strong hive building up, gets a relatively high mite load, and swarms. The swarm takes more than half the bees, a good chunk of the reserves, and very few of the mites, so you end up with a small, weak colony, a virgin queen who isn't laying yet (and maybe has viruses), no queen pheromone, no eggs, no brood, and a ton of mites. Diseased bees fly away and die, this increases the mite load on remaining bees,  and they can't protect the honey they have. Only takes a couple weeks to go from a big strong bustling hive to a bunch of empty boxes with no honey, brood, or bees.

Pesticides are a red herring. They're clearly causing problems, but pretty much every study done on CCD points to mites, and secondary viral infection.

[manfmlox]

Not sure where they got their numbers. I'm fairly certain nobody came around and counted mine....