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2012 Dieback Already?

105K views 327 replies 52 participants last post by  JRG13 
#1 ·
I have heard from a beekeeper here in NY that he has been hearing of and seeing dieback in his outfit and others across the Nation, many different parts and in parts of Canada. How about y'all? Seen or heard something similar? What's going on? What are your observations or conversations about this like?

Is it mites? One guy I corresponded w/ thinks it has to do w/ the mild Winter (11/12) which was not only easy on the bees but the mites too, allowing an earlier buildup in the colonies.

Thanks for your input.
 
#2 ·
as we check the outs we are not finding mites in the capped brood, lots of outs from Idaho where the drought brought on a grasshopper population which then was sprayed with growth regulators. The bees that were in areas not sprayed look ok.
 
#3 ·
Im hearing nothing but good looking hives from others this fall. My hives looked good going into winter storage also, but thinking my nucs looked small. I have not seen any Deformed Wing Virus this year like I have seen in previous years. My nosema is under control also, so the tests had determined.
Our bees have not flown since beginning of October, and now they sit in storage. Could be a 6 month duration in the wintering sheds, this spring will determine our wintering success
 
#15 ·
In my attempt to sweep CharlieB's `odfrank' challenges on Beesource this year, see:

http://www.beesource.com/forums/sho...ready-for-the-Odfrank-overwintering-challenge

my bees are setting up nicely. Clusters dwindling to fist size, DWV crawlers by the thousands, a few total losses already. I attribute it to no treatments for mites and massive DWV. Hives with mid and late summer queens seem almost impervious. Lots of EFB also. Looking good to be the big winner once again. Eighty-three and falling fast. It doesn't turn around till well past New Years, but at least the Eucalyptus have started blooming.

Gallons of soggy bee corpses for sale cheap, smell great for vandalization projects, like hide pile of them under the seat of your enemies car or truck.
 
#17 ·
I had 6 (out of 40) die so far, but 5 of those were my fault through starvation. A commercial guy near me has lost 20-30% of this hives. Lack of fall nectar and mites is the current guess.

All of my hives are very light. I've been feeding heavy, but they aren't putting on much weight. I'll end up putting candy boards or dry sugar on almost all hives. :(
 
#21 ·
Seems to follow this study. Infected bees fly off and die and healthy bees do fine.

A total of 705 individual bees were analyzed from five colonies over three seasons in 2010. bees analyzed were sampled from the honey supers because we found no significant difference in infection levels among different groups of bees sampled Overall, colonies were found to be infected with N. ceranae. In the spring, all colonies were found infected with an average N. ceranae copy number of 8,007. In the summer, 80% of colonies were found infected with an average N. ceranae copy number of 37,057. Only one colony was found infected in the fall; however, only one bee from this colony was positive for N. ceranae infection with an average copy number of 70.3. All other samples were negative (n = 249). These findings bring into question whether a hive that has been deemed highly infected has been diagnosed as such because of an overall high infection level or because of sampling practices in which a minority of bees were highly infected but the remainder exhibited only low-level infections or no infection.

Insects 2012, 3, 1143-1155; doi:10.3390/insects3041143

Individual Variability of Nosema ceranae Infections in Apis mellifera Colonies Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail: traverb@vt.edu
 
#20 ·
I have heard a few reports of early losses. Seems like every year we hear some of these reports though this year it is pretty early. Pretty hard to know the scope or the causes at this point. Our bees are looking pretty good at this point. We have only seen about a 5% attrition since spring though I am sure the winter will claim a few more.
 
#28 · (Edited)
Back to the original question. Though not from commercial operations but several beekeepers have lost hives in the past few weeks near us. I never saw them but they claimed they were really strong late August early Sept. I think all were treated with ApiVar for mites in Sept or Oct. The only answers so far have been mite or virus overload. Some of the hives had plenty of stores.
Mark
 
#31 ·
We have a mixed bag here, SQKCRK. the connection seems to be with rainfall. We had HEAT and no rain all July. The Rain came in narrow, swaths. If the yard got rain,and therefore made honey, it looks OK now. In August, two yards, 6 miles apart, show the range. one had almost 2 deeps surplus, the other was fed that night, it was starving. We are blaming the plats/rain(or lack thereof) for the problems we are seeing.


Crazy Roland
 
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