Eggs on varroa mite trap

[mackles]

I recently checked my varroa mite traps and on one of the hives ,which to my knowledge is queenless, i found hundreds of little eggs which look like bee eggs. I found it odd being that the queenright hives didnt have this. I havent checked the hive to see if there is a queen or not. What could this be? could it be an indicator of the laying worker problem? Your posts are appriciated

[louis1st]

Sounds like you have the small hive beetle !

[Branman]

If you live in the southeast, I'd also suspect small hive beetles...eggs are laid in clusters and are close to the same size as honeybee eggs.

[Phoenix]

Doesn't matter where your located, SHB can be, and have been transported in packages. Even if your in the north, you are not out of the woods.

It would help us to help you better if you would fill in your profile as to where you are located geographically.

I have not heard of a Varroa mite trap, can you give me more information on this?

[mackles]

Well first they look EXACTLY like bee eggs, hot dog shaped, white, small, and they aren't in clusters, they are spread around as if they had fallen out of their cells (which makes me think the only possible answer would be laying workers because they are queenless at the moment). I asked a nieghbor beekeeper who does this for a living for the last 30 years and he said he has never heard of it. He also said that this year has been the oddest years in his profession and random un explainable things like this have occured numerous times.

A varroa mite trap is a wire screen that goes over or replaces the bottom board. A natural count of about 10-15% of the mites fall off the bees and climb back up into the hive. This traps prevents them from climbing back up and they die a slow painfull death trapped down there. serves them right. You can by them for 15-20 dollars at any bee shop online or not. It's hard to buy them when you have hundreds of hives, but if your just a hobbiest with a few, it works wonders.

[Branman]

oh, you're talking about a screen bottom board...

Are there a lot of ants around?

another possibility is maybe they are in fact SHB eggs and the workers are dropping them out of the hive? I'm reaching here [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Phoenix]

I'm sorry, a SBB never even crossed my mind as being referred to as a trap. DUH...!

[Dick Allen]

how long has the hive been queenless?

[Axtmann]

Mackles I was wondering how a Varroa trap might work because itÂ’s the first time I hear about this.
What you call a Varroa trap is a monitoring device to find out how high the colonies are infested.
You can use paper or cardboard with vegetable oil or Vaseline on it. The dropping mites canÂ’t climb up and it will give you an idea about the situation in the colony.

You can’t use it as a “treatment” against Varroa mites. During summer more than 85% of the mites sitting in closed cells and breeding and the population doubles or triples every 20 days.

If you find 10 - 15 mites on a sticky board in 24 hours this time of the year, I would say there are 300 – 500 Varroa in the colony (or even more).
The end of this month you will have 1000 – 1500 nice little creatures. The colony will break down during September.

[louis1st]

if you have got some laying workers, they can only lay drones, and the other "normal " worker bees will try to resize the cells to make them bigger...

have you noticed any change in the shape/size of your brood cells? it should be very irregular!??

[mackles]

I posted a new post on this hive in the bee forum about the Possible laying workers. I checked the hive today and there are about 1-8 eggs in each cell, but no change in brood frames to drone. I noticed that the queen just hatched out or was killed. I dont know if it is just because of a young queen or not. They have been queenless for about a month, but they made a queen cell so i figured let nature take its coarse. Thanks for your input everyone
P.S. not a single ant on the bottom so they arnt ant eggs.

[Michael Bush]

I've never seen bee eggs on the trays. Are you sure they aren't wax scales or something else?

[mackles]

positive

[Dwight]

Are you positive they are not ant eggs? In the spring when I feed my colonies the ants always lay thousands of eggs on top of the inner cover.
They are about the size and shape of bee eggs.

[Hill's Hivery]

Do you have access to a digital camera so you can post a picture? It might help everyone here to help you diagnose the problem.

[Dick Allen]

Ant eggs!?!?!? Is it possible the nail has just been smacked directly on it's head?!

[ScadsOBees]

If there is laying workers, which sounds likely with up to 8 eggs per cell, is it possible they are dumping the extra eggs out instead of eating all of the extras?

[BULLSEYE BILL]

I think that SOB, er, Scads has it right, extra eggs being cleaned out or falling from a sloppy layer.