Hives coming out of California - what are you seeing?

[alpha6]

Anyone seeing any brood problems with their hives coming out of Almonds? We are noticing hives that seem to have lost a brood cycle, especially those coming out of groves that are spraying fungacide on the blooms. Just checking to see if others are seeing something simular.

Second, anyone using MAQS? Anyone notice any brood kill using these? We ran strips in about 300 hives and are finding hives that are not at full strength are taking some brood hits. Still trying to figure it out, but have decided to go with Thymol jell as spring treatment till it's figured out.

[gregstahlman]

oh the great california gold rush!!!! have witnessed brood losses due to fungicide sprays in years past. that's the exact reason we don't send bees out there anymore. growers want to cry about the high price of bees but they sure don't feel bad about killing off hives and contaminating everybodies combs with chemicals. untill more bee "friendly" sprays are used, this company will stay out of cali indefinately. hmmm, i wonder how this could play a part in the "mysterious CCD". had the state inspector come by today and he had said he needed to go test some other guys bees that had been sprayed off. they had a semi load come in from cali and had 180 dead hives. all the hives were full of honey so they sure didn't starve. these guys are really good beekeepers so i feel that it is out of their hands. hey but at least they made that important pollination money, but let's not forget about the losses in honey that could have been made from these hives and the splits that could have been made from them. too bad companies like monsanto, bayer, cargill, and adm control everything in this county because they are the ones killing off the bee industry

[jim lyon]

A real mixed bag out of Cali this year. Seemed like either the pallet was really good and averaged 12 frames of brood or they were smaller and averaged more like 6 frames. We sent out pretty darn good bees and had them handled by 2 different guys in Cali but the results seemed to be the same in each scenario. Fungicides is high on my list of reasons for this but I will probably never know for sure. The smaller ones were almost always heavy with new pollen and honey which left me wondering how a hive strong enough to bring in that much could be that short on bees. If it makes you feel vindicated, Greg, our small to medium sized hives that we left in Texas averaged more frames of brood than the "big" doubles off the almonds. We noticed, though, that the queens in smaller units really started laying as soon as they got back in Texas. Ended up with enough bees to go around but not sure that would have been the case if we had "sold out" and shipped everything west.

[suttonbeeman]

Our bees came back in excellant shape. 80% were jamed packed full of bees andlots of brood. About 4% queenless/drone layer or DO. Had a few starve....cold last week they were in Fl then rain first two weeks in Ca. 15% had a box of bees....overall great shape! But we have alwasy had bees come back in good shape....just a little more drone layers/queenless that this year....usually 10 %.

[HarryVanderpool]

Exactly the same as Sutton.
Our bees were in Northern CA and rain, rain, rain, rain.
I'm sure they lost weight.
We always figure 5% queen loss in transit.

[Beeslave]

Bees were around Chowchilla.....1 1/2 storey hives....15% loss approx(including drone layers as a loss)........With the live hives some were heavy, some light, but most ok and may not need feeding if the weather warms again soon in WI. 75% + are boiling over with bees. 20% appeared ok....good brood...milky larva...nice pattern but just behind. 5% gave me that scary feeling I had with previous years large loss because of Nosema(I think) when I inspected them.....small cluster.....and a queen with a nice pattern....plenty of honey.

If 2 hives on the pallet were good then 4 hives would be good......many of the deadouts were in groups of 2 to 3 hives on one pallet. Most of the dead outs appeared to be void of bees for a month or more. If sign of a previous drone layer there would be maybe 1 dead hive on a pallet. Not clusters of drone laying deadouts. That observation makes me think that what lead to the demise of these hives happened before they were sent to CA.....Like the consumption of pollen stored in the hive while in CA that was collected in WI before they went to CA last November. Almost like certain hives from certain WI honey locations did well while others that had different forage in WI did worse.

[Heavenly bees]

had some losses this year at one orchard located in madera . out of the 160 that i had there 130 made it out with 6/7 frames of bees and 3/4 frames of brood .in the hives that died off there was brood and plenty of honey/pollen don't know what happend looks like ccd. but the colonies should be 9/10 frame colonies by that time

[Apiator]

growers want to cry about the high price of bees but they sure don't feel bad about killing off hives and contaminating everybodies combs with chemicals.

Maybe you big bee truckers should start writing up contracts that include back charges to the knucklehead growers for killing your bees.

I grew up on a small almond orchard by Paso Robles. My pop never sprayed a thing -- organic before anyone coined the term I reckon -- and still had a crop every year. Our only pest control was some semi-feral cats to keep the ground squirrels in check.

Turned out, all the wildflowers and grasses and such in the understory are what kept the almond trees healthy. But all the big conventional growers... the floor of their orchards is a barren wasteland.

Wonder if anyone has put a price to what the chemical warfare in just the almond industry has cost the bee industry?