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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.
 
#255 ·
I noticed this year because of the lack of moisture/dry fields that pretty much all the alfalfa was cut shortly after the blooming started as well. High winds were hard on the canola as well. We seem to have been hit with a fall dearth instead of a flow. I have some mixed bush around here and the bees used the wildflowers to keep going. It seems that the bees run out of forage long before the no fly weather starts. Big advantage to overwintering indoors is being able to feed during the winter if necessary.
 
#256 ·
Our entire area made a better than average honey crop ( 1st one in over 15 years )
We sit in with corn, beans & a little alfalfa. What CRP didn't get cut & rolled up for hay this summer is now getting broke up to be planted into row crop next year.
The entire outfit sat on ground that had less than 3 inches of rain from April to October, so yes very dry conditions.
As I said before one yard will have a 80% loss & 5 miles down the road the loss is less than 10%.
Cluster size is all over the map in the yards that are left, but remember every yard made a good crop with honey being made untill frost.
We even did a very intresting testing this year with genitics in a yard of singles. Very amazed as to what breeders queens did & what they made for a honey crop & that includes our own queens.
Never the less at this point in time none are looking any to great for the few that are left alive.
Then ya have the comb honey bees here near the city. They are in with corn, beans, & alfalfa as the rest of the outfit way west of here. They look great. with huge clusters & no losses.
Our USDA testing on dead bees, honey, pollen & wax showed only that a comment from the lab that our tests were very clean, some of the cleanest tests the lab has done in quite some time for lack of chemicals in any of the testing they did.
Ok so last item to think about is a thought I might as well start a yard of Russians out in one of our locations that is way off in the sticks. So in calling one of the listed breeders of the Russian program I explained what I had for a plan that I spoke of above. He was very intrested & liked what I had in mind & then told me that he was not so sure the Russians would be a cure all for my bee loss problems. His story was that this past season he pollinated blueberries. The bees that were used on blueberries for the most part were all gone, dead & what was left living were probably not going to make it untill spring.
He explained that the bees had been fine for quite some time after removed for the blueberries but they never really looked right from pollination time on. And now there is nothing but empty boxes to look at!
 
#258 ·
The bees that were used on blueberries for the most part were all gone, dead & what was left living were probably not going to make it untill spring.
He explained that the bees had been fine for quite some time after removed for the blueberries but they never really looked right from pollination time on. And now there is nothing but empty boxes to look at!
Soupcan, isnt that a classic case of mal nutrition ? Blueberries are notorious for that
 
#257 ·
It was a very challenging late summer fall this year. To figure out which yard to feed and which yard to super up,.! I called it the thunder storm lottery. I had yard that I was a week too late on feeding, hurt the cluster size by the time October rolled around. Other yards 10 miles away I was trying to figure if they needed supers on, and they did! I thought a plugged brood nest was going to hurt me, but by the time Nov came, those were the largest wintering hives.

I like years were they are bringing in nectar straight into September, so much easier on the nerves
 
#259 ·
Hi, this is a very interesting thread! :applause:


I have read with great interest how nectar seems to be less plentiful then in decades past and I've noticed that too.

My daughter sent me a link to a site that shows a daily hodge-podge of links and movies from around the 'net. I was glancing at one link and this caught my eye:

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=79800


I then dug around and found this link:


http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2000/ast15nov_1/


There's certainly less dark then there used to be and plants are photoperiodic.
We certainly have much less darkness then we did even ten years ago.

Might be baloney too. I thought the photos and description of the changes interesting and post-worthy.

Adam Finkelstein
www.vpqueenbees.com
 
#261 ·
but mal nutrition does not have a lot to do with the carbs, its more protein related.
And you do not see that effect of mal nutrition til a generation of two after the fact,
Big hive working hard, maybe even bringing in boxes of honey will completely crash is its nutritional requirements are not met.
Blueberry pollen, = deficit of nutritional value
 
#262 ·
I would even suggest the same with any plant that is mal nourished, it will provide pollen lacking in nourishment.
Perhaps that is a problem that is becoming evident with our protein sources being yielded off of fields lacking in proper crop nutrition.
I know for a fact that the soils that we are farming here are lacking many trace minerals that it once always had. Our farm relieves that problem with a manure rotation over much of the farm.
 
#264 · (Edited)
AND blueberry pollen has little to no nutritional value to it, leading most hives on those crops to mal nutrition,
Look at the bigger picture, its not always out side factors taking hives down,
sometimes its as basic and natural and predicable as you can get it

Most every time there is a drought, if we are not quick on the feed, we have suffering hives, thats natural
the bees food source is stressed , leading to lower quality of feed produced by the plants

I see this in our cattle operation, with our silage
We have our feed tested and analysed every season, every year brings different requirements.
This year our protien was lacking a bit, and also our calcuim. So we have had to supplement protien and calcuim to meet our cattle dietary feed requirments. Why was the calcuim and protien down this year? Lots of factors but the bottom line is that we needed to supplement to meet those requirements.

Why would it be any different with bees? I think we expect way too much from nature herself. We demand performance every season from our bees and expect nature to be able to provide us with all those requirements predicably every season. We need to be more aware of whats happening in our hives
 
#265 ·
IAN
PLEASE read my entire posts again. As I pray you sir do not have to go thru the the same " stuff " we are going thru here in the states.
Your implication seems to be that we do not know as to what is going on in our hives or for the most part what is going on around us & for the most part the bees.
I am a farm boy at heart & know cattle & hogs.
I just seem to know a wee bit more about bees than livestock.
 
#266 ·
I have, and dont think you see the obvious

Your Russian friend commented
>>The bees that were used on blueberries for the most part were all gone, dead & what was left living were probably not going to make it untill spring.
He explained that the bees had been fine for quite some time after removed for the blueberries but they never really looked right from pollination time on. And now there is nothing but empty boxes to look at!

I suggested
>>isnt that a classic case of mal nutrition ? Blueberries are notorious for that

and you suggested
>>Doubt it, when there are no bees left in the box & some were still over half full of honey.

I know guys in blueberry pollination, they feed sub right through the bloom
 
#268 ·
Sorry for a relatively new beekeeper question here. . . On hives that aren't in blueberry pollination, but are left in the same yard. How do you tell if there's some sort of malnutrition in the hive? There's no way that I know of, other than using a microscope, to tell what pollen they're bringing in. I have seen hives this year dwindle to finally die out. They had some pollen and stores while they were going down. If it was malnutrition I'd like to have some way to be able to see this as it's happening so I can stop it before I have a hive that dies out. It didn't appear to be mites either as the hives that I'm referring to were nucs started late June early July and had a 3-4 week break in brood. ( I have one hive that I used to start queens, let them rear them and then broke the hive up with the queens they reared. One in question was doing great w/ 4 deep frames of brood in all stages looking fabulous.)
 
#271 · (Edited)
How do you tell if there's some sort of malnutrition in the hive?
I dont know either, and Im making a comment generally towards other pollen producing plant in reference to what we know about blueberry pollen nutritional value and from my experience in finding variable year to year nutritional feed values in livestock feed.
Im suggesting, why would we not expect to find the same nutritional variability in plant pollen from one normal year to the next extreme hot drought year,.? It certainly was on my mind all summer this year.

I know guys around here are starting to feed their bees sub during the late summer early fall months where as that was basically un heard of around here. Is there a nutrient deficit in our soils where as we did not have years past? Are the plants changing as modern day agriculture shifts towards different breeding of plants? Or is it just the plain a simple fact that our bees are under attack by many more pathogens now and absolutely require to be in tip top shape to be able to winter properly,...
 
#269 ·
I guess we would be considered small commercial beekeepers.
We operate in a strip that is aprox 50 miles by 30 miles. I know darn small by many standards now a days. We could run more but found out years ago it wasn't about the number of boxes you had out in the field ( hives ) but the number of bees you kept in those boxes. And with that thought in mind I really feel we do a better job of running the number hives we run.
I remember the so called CCD thing all to well & this spring I thought to myself what have we done as beeks to make this problem disapear. Well guess what " I'm Back " and or " Find me if you can "
In the past 90 days I think I have spoke to the best of the best in the bee business world, researchers & beekeepers alike. And I have come away with probably more questions now than before. A little education can be dangerous I am told but the questions & facts still linger and can not be ignored.
Us beeks are I feel have always been in this alone, very alone as we are such a small minority in todays world.
Get over it and move on or ????
Someone will have to go probably hungry to change the course of this ship we all seem to be on, but then again that may be to late I fear!
 
#270 · (Edited)
I found the same thing in regards to your comments about finding differences in performances related to queen breeding genetics. I think I read into your comment correctly,
I ran 4 or 5 different breedings of queens this year, and I can directly associate better performing hives to a couple of breeders we used. I have always found that generally the breeders provided much the same performance quality and characteristics over the last number of years. This year I had a couple of breeders really significantly stand apart from the others. Was this an overall queen health issue, I dont know.
Ill see if I see the same next year.
 
#274 ·
Is that what you do JBJ? I don't. I determine whether my bees are in a good location by whetehr they thrive in a healthy manner and produce brood and surplus honey. That's why I don't keep very many colonies hee at home. The necassary forage is not available. I found this out by keeping bees on this location, not by analysis of fat bodies and vitelogenn. I don't know how one does such analysis.

On the other hand, technically you are probably correct, but realistically? Economically? Easily?
 
#276 ·
Sorry guys but I do think we are missing the point here big time.
We should not need to feed bees during a nectar & pollen flow, we never used to and so what has changed????
I will share this from my findings, one main item of intrest I have been told is that there has been no testing of fungicides on bees, & none required.
So let us ask that question of who ????
Or let us have a look at the testing if it has in fact been done. Very easy & real simple & right to the point.
No I have no proof of any thing at this point just some ideas from my farmer friends that can not be ignored.
So are these products used in Canada?
 
#281 ·
Wildbranch - one of the oldtimers blames acid rain for the change in the plants. Do you think there is any possibility it has had an effect?


Crazy Roland
I'm no expert but that would be one possibility, the north east has had that problem forever but why would it be less of a problem in N.Y. ? Since in Mass. it started before GM, neonics, etc and b/4 they started telling us about global warming etc. Heck it could be some disease of golden rod, nobody would bother to look and most people would be happy.
I wish I knew where my neighbors kids were living now, they were so alergic to golden rod, wonder how bad there alergies are now, less goldenrod less alergies?
I observe these things going on, but don't really spend much time thinking about it as other than moving bees, not a thing I can do about it. I did propose gathering napp weed seeds and replanting the goldenrod fields, but got severe repremands about nasty weeds:) Heck it could be as Ian says, the goldenrod has been growing there for ever, mayby it finally used up some nutrients that it requires, actually makes more sense than most ideas. I watch farmers up here that don't rotate crops and keep putting on more and more fertilizer and getting less and less crops, what ever happened to leaving a field fallow for a year. the bees would probably start doing better.
 
#284 ·
What about the changes in agriculture and the dairy farming practices. The St. Lawrence Valley of NY used to be the prime honey producing region of NY, producing huge crops of water white clover honey. But that was when there were hundreds of small family farms, not huge ones like today, and the cows grazed on the pastures. So there was plenty of bee forage too. Fencerows and hedgerows existed more so providing a greater variety of pollen and nectar producing plants.

So, acid rain probably contributes to the problem, but, I bet it is more complex than we as individuals can imagine. And there is no turning back. It's not economically feasible.
 
#285 · (Edited)
Just a comment on fungicides. There is research now showing problems with some of them .One problem seems to be a synergistic effect when some varroa chems are being used, causing both chemicals to be much more toxic to bees and brood.

I know that several N Cal bee breeders feel that the fungicides now being used on almond bloom are causing problems in cell viability.One is holding cell building hives out of almonds and another is trapping clean pollen in the mountains to feed to early cell builders. I have seen bees killed by the fungicide spraying that takes place in broad daylight during full bloom. but I think the worse damage comes later , after bloom, when the bees dig into there stores of almond pollen. I have seen bees pile up in front of hives , making me wonder if there was pesticide residues in the spray tanks when the fungicide was sprayed.All hard to prove, and like most of these bee losses no really obvious answer.

http://westernfarmpress.com/fungicides-can-reduce-hinder-pollination-potential-honey-bees
 
#292 ·
Just a comment on fungicides. There is research now showing problems with some of them .One problem seems to be a synergistic effect when some varroa chems are being used, causing both chemicals to be much more toxic to bees and brood.

I know that several N Cal bee breeders feel that the fungicides now being used on almond bloom are causing problems in cell viability.One is holding cell building hives out of almonds and another is trapping clean pollen in the mountains to feed to early cell builders. I have seen bees killed by the fungicide spraying that takes place in broad daylight during full bloom. but I think the worse damage comes later , after bloom, when the bees dig into there stores of almond pollen. I have seen bees pile up in front of hives , making me wonder if there was pesticide residues in the spray tanks when the fungicide was sprayed.All hard to prove, and like most of these bee losses no really obvious answer.

http://westernfarmpress.com/fungicides-can-reduce-hinder-pollination-potential-honey-bees
That's a really meaningful link Mike. You also gave a lot of good insights on this issue. I know I have seen some of these issues with our bees coming out of the Almonds and into east Texas. They always seem to recover pretty quickly for us but perhaps that is because there is plenty of fresh pollen coming in down there at that time and given the fact that we are not using any other mite chemicals at the time might well also aid in their rapid recovery. Bees being moved into a dearth and with different management techniques might well continue to decline.
 
#286 ·
my state apiarist came by today to pick up bee samples i had collected of some usurping bees, and some from a varroa dead out that i was interested in having checked for nosema.

i asked him about 2012 losses, and he said that they probably were up some from last year.

he felt like it was most likely from the ineffective treatment of varroa, and from not preventing the spread of varroa from collapsing hives to other hives.
 
#287 ·
ANd how are feelings are important, who gives a rip about feelings!!!

I want tangible evidence to see, a lot of people seem to revert to mites when in doubt.

So again today I went on a mission to find some

Today I dug thru a sick hive, scraped every capped brood and shook out larva on lid, what did I find NOTHING , not a single varroa mite in sight, NADA, ZIPO, ZERO!

I then checked bees, no mites at all!!

Bee samples are being sent to BVS tomorrow for virus testing.

This hive iwas down to 1 1/2 frames of bees, and going nowhere, now its totaly dead because I want to know what is happening.

I have had a high number of losses this year and the only place I have found mite in are a few strong hives. And yes they are still strong.

So my mission continues
 
#289 ·
Larry, I had a yard fall also, mite counts satisfactory,
I did some testing on the bees in that yard and found high levels of nosema

My nosema testing for my overall operation was low, just this one yard spiking for some reason

I also found one queen in a failinghive and tested tested her along with my bee samples, being freshly put in that spring, and from a rumor that outfit may have had a nosema issue, but the queen came back absolutely clean
 
#290 ·
SQKCRK - we are in the kettle moraine, an area of terminal moraines, rather hilly, but good soil. We still have mostly small family farms, and alot of milk production. The Bull f the Woods did complain of the invention of the hay crimper in the 60's, which effected alfalfa cutting nad hence honey production.

We still have considerable fence rows and road sides that SHOULD bloom in Sweet Clover, and sometimes do, but often produce no nectar, unlike a couple decades ago.

Our area is not unlike Sheri's, but more hilly. Maybe she can provide some opinions.

Crazy Roland
 
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