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Unclear ( to me ) cause of death

21K views 234 replies 28 participants last post by  Michael Bush 
#1 ·
Today I looked in my hives and one of them was dead, but I don't know why- There could be many reasons so I have a few questions. Okay here is what I can see. There are fecal stains on the comb/top bars so I'm thinking dysentery or nosema. The package was bought this spring and no honey was taken off in the fall (I wintered them in 3 deeps, also wrapped). They were under inner cover so I started dry sugar feeding on inner cover and they wouldn't take any, the inner cover has dead bees around the outside just laying their, and bees appeared to be mingling around the hive all over. Still a lot of drones (dead of course!) with the workers. Also there appeared to be a lot of brood around. The second DHB still has honey (capped/uncapped) and there is not much pollen. So my questions if you could please help are: What did they die of? If so does the hive need to be treated? Can I extract the honey of feed it to other bees? Help! P.S. some pictues are at http://home.earthlink.net/~bschmidtbauer/id9.html
Sorry that the page looks like junk- but i quickly made it so I could show the picts.
 
#228 ·
Yes, extreme cases of varroa infestation cause a condition that looks like, smells like and ropes like AFB, but not quite. I've only experienced this once. Lab verification came back negative for AFB. That's probably the main reason that NY State verifies all field diagnoses, to be sure. Even though field diagnosis, here in NY State, have been 99% accurate for years.

Another thing that may have eluded some of you is that the font for BEE SOURCE BULLETIN BOARD is in Bees Knees font style. Isn't that neat. I've thought about using that style of font on my truck door lettering.

Mark
 
#229 ·
I have another queston now; I burned 10 supers and 6 Deeps of comb yesterday and got them buried, but since it is almost positive that I have FB in the other 2 hives to get totally rid of it should I just burn all hives-even those that are alive? My plan would be to burn all of the comb/frames (possiblely extract the honey) and then fire all of the boxes and also scorch cover, inner cover, bottom board, and stand, and then repaint it all. What exactly would Teramycin do? It doesn't kill the spores, right? so the equiptment would still be contaminated right? also does it make a diference if one have has a MN Hygenic Queen? Thanks
 
#230 ·
According to the state bee inspector in my area; "All hives have FB spores in them". Actual FB outbreaks are related to stressed hives, i.e. hives that are under stress due to v mites, t mites, lack of available forage, lack of ventilation, etc. If we were to kill all hives that have FB spores in them, we would have to kill them all. A sampling of retail honey in Pa. (I believe it was three years ago) from over 2000 stores confirmed FB spores in EVERY sample.

Terramycin is supposed to help prevent an outbreak of FB not cure it. I would not do anything with the remaining hives unless they showed signs of active FB. I certainly wouldn't take the drastic step of destroying them.
 
#231 ·
My little stroke of genius :D : To be a bit safer I tried using a big torch that we have (500,000 BTU for burning weeds) on the boxes and it seemed to work great. Why don't other people do that? I think it would be a lot safer and easier than stacking them and lighting them on fire with kerosene. Thanks
 
#233 ·
back in the days when I made a living as a welder, we had what we called a "rosebud" tip to go on an oxy/acetylene torch
we used it when we wanted to heat stuff rather than cut it (the standard tip is a "cutting" tip)
I know not everyone has access to a torch but I suspect lots of folks here do
I would think that would do an excellent job
very easy to control

Dave
 
#234 ·
I like the torch idea for scorching woodenware. I wonder if a propane torch or MAPP-gas torch wouldn't work just as well, just take longer to get the process done? After all, as long as the temperatures are high enough to scorch the wood, they should destroy FB spores as well.

Thanks for the answers, guys, about the FB symptoms, too. I already knew the rope test, and, even though I've never tried it, I knew about the milk test, too. I was hoping for an answer from Tim in particular; something in the photos (not a smell or a test or some scale way down in the cells) convinced him that this was a case of FB. I'm not saying that I would use it as a way of confirning FB, but I'd like to know what he used to make his diagnosis with so much certainty.
 
#235 ·
> like the torch idea for scorching woodenware. I wonder if a propane torch or MAPP-gas torch wouldn't work just as well, just take longer to get the process done?

It will kill the FB spores just as well. But it's MUCH quicker to fire a stack of boxes with some newspaper and diesel fuel.
 
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