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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.
 
#221 ·
>My NC contact eluded to a Beekeeper returning fromn CA as the source of problems

Sure, blame it on us. We liberal Californians are at fault again, you all know it's a Sodom and Gomorrah out here.
 
#224 ·
How does it work?
Easy. They picked up some strange mutated virus in the almonds.That came in from bees from Florida. And the Florida bees got it originally as they traveled through North Carolina.

Or some variation of the above...lol.

Really, most all of our big die offs can be traced back to mites and the viruses they pack around. Even if you knock the mites back, the viruses will have to run their course. At least thats what I have seen since all these big losses started a few years ago.

Add some spray damage and nosema and we are so screwed.
 
#227 ·
but i've not heard of either of the two synthetic miticides being pulled from the shelf, has anyone else heard this?

rumor has it the mites are showing measured tolerance to one of them though, is this true?
 
#233 ·
Can you be more specific? Which two synthetic miticides are u refering to?

Mites have been resistant to Apistan(fluvalinate) and Checkmiteplus(chumophous) for quite some time now, having been around since 1987 and 1989 or 90. So, yes, it's true. I don't know of either being pulled from the shelf.

Miticure(amitraz, the active ingredient in TacTik) was take off the shelf by the manufacturer because of Law Suits, not mite resistance. Back in the 1990s.
 
#229 ·
i had to call my inspector out twice, and he came. i have had bee samples for him for a month, and he hasn't had a chance to get by and pick them up yet. we have two for the state, north half and south half.
 
#231 ·
called beltsville first. they weren't set up to do the sub-species identification. beltsville refered me to tucson, but they never called me back. the state boys said they would be glad to id them, but haven't come by yet.

i could mail the usurpation bees, as they are preserved in alcohol, but i'd rather visit with the apiarist.

the bees with possible nosema are frozen, mailing would again be pain
 
#234 ·
Lost about 40% as of right now...I'll be lucky if by the end of winter the losses remain bellow 50%. Did treat this fall...some with Apiguard some with MAQS. Some, I did not treat at all. On the treated ones, very little mite fall outs. In the end, I had losses from every category.

The only common denominator on all these hives is that by the end of June/mid July, all had at least two 10 F deeps, full of bees...some had 3...literally busting with bees. Coming late fall, some of these hives just melted away. I did not take any honey from the fall flow, so they had plenty of reserves...One week the hive would have bees...next week all gone...disappeared. The only thing left was plenty of reserves ( honey and pollen), and some dead freshly emerged baby bees. Yes, some hives did have the mite poop on the wall of the comb cells, but then again, this was the case in the treated and no treated category. Some of these hives were established hives, some where splits and swarms from early 2012. All were lead by 2012 queens.

If there is a silver lining in this... all the 5 F deep nucs I made in June and built to 2 deeps or 3 deeps by fall...are alive and well. Did treat about 1/2 of them with Apiguard while not treating the other half. So far no difference.
Hopefully, they will make it and be the base of my 2013 "recovery plan"...
 
#235 ·
Lost about 40% as of right now...I'll be lucky if by the end of winter the losses remain bellow 50%.

The only common denominator on all these hives is that by the end of June/mid July, all had at least two 10 F deeps, full of bees...some had 3...literally busting with bees. Coming late fall, some of these hives just melted away. I did not take any honey from the fall flow, so they had plenty of reserves...One week the hive would have bees...next week all gone...disappeared. The only thing left was plenty of reserves ( honey and pollen), and some dead freshly emerged baby bees. Some of these hives were established hives, some where splits and swarms from early 2012.

If there is a silver lining in this... all the 5 F deep nucs I made in June and built to 2 deeps or 3 deeps by fall...are alive and well.
I have seen a hair over 20% losses in production hives this fall, mostly the last month. The symptoms are very similar to what you are describing, strong colonies with plenty of stores, mostly honey, very few of the deadouts were fed this year before the crash. Crashed in a period of about 3 weeks abandoning brood on 1 or 2 frames to the sides of the small dead cluster. Pretty certain we're looking at PMS of some sort. The surviving hives appear to be strong and in good shape. My nucs are holding up well, no losses so far. I had about 90 colonies before the crash, half 10 frame, half nucs. One yard lost 75% (small yard, 3 out of 4), one 12 colony yard didn't lose any.
 
#238 ·
Ok So what's the answer / answers? I know MP and others are for nucs for obvious enough reasons, but what else? I am not commercial, but I have also lost 3 hives this year before the end of fall and it seems that the reasons are similar to what's been said. Numbers just tart to dwindle down to next to nothing, then they get robbed out and dead. I realized late summer 2 of them were low on stores so I started feeding and they seemed to be doing well. 10 frame deep box, with 4 solid brood, 2-3 empty and 2-3 capped stores and then they just started losing numbers. (queen was new this year) My nucs are doing well, as is one of my larger hives.
 
#246 ·
2 gallons of thymolated HFCS, slightly thinned, in an inverted 2 gallon pail. This yard was 6 miles from a yard that had gotten rain and had just filled two deeps each. The fed yard had 1/4 inch brown stripes up the outer edges of the corn leafs, and had not gotten rain.

Crazy Roland
 
#248 ·
I keep a mixture of genetics in each yard. I had one area that didn't get much rain, one apiary managed okay, not much surplus but hives are heavy enough to make it. Another yard several miles away which also didn't see the rain but had crops surounding the farm change from hay fields to corn- ALL the hives in that yard had very small clusters with no surplus honey to speak of
 
#249 ·
I find posts such as yours informative since it involves first hand and comparative information. The condition of your poorer yard is pretty much in line with what a lot of folks have been seeing in recent years. It dosent, of course, necessarily mean that the corn is any more the problem than the lack of a honey flow. Across our outfit this fall I could pretty much unequivocally state that larger cluster size was in direct proportion to how heavy the late summer and fall flow was.
 
#250 ·
Ian - we have records back to the 1930's. Mostly when queens where clipped, supers put on, extracted, fed, and wrapped. Timing is WAY off now. The "Bull of the Woods" agrees that the fall flow to build bees for winter is gone. The other clue is that some of the best flows in the past 4 years have been plants that never produced a surplus before, Red Maple, Wild Cherry, Something in early June, Chicory?. The "Normal" plants, alfalfa, Sweet clover and Goldenrod have been failures lately. In years past, if you saw a field of anything in bloom, there would be a honey flow. Now it is safer to assume they are all empty.

Crazy Roland
 
#251 ·
I don't find that up here at all.
Clovers, canola, alfalfa, they are all producing, weather depending of course.
alot of our flows depend on the farming function it self. If seeding get weather delayed, we will have long honey flows, big honey crops, but other years the entire crop will be sewed in a couple of weeks. Same with alfalfa, I can have a good flow going, but there are times when all the farmers cut it ALL down in a week, flow ended.

I chuckle sometimes, I make my living off of farmers who dont get their work done in a timely fashion
that farmer is my farms sometimes lol
 
#254 · (Edited by Moderator)
.....
Clovers, canola, alfalfa, they are all producing, weather depending of course.
{/QUOTE]

I agree 100%. If the alfalfa and clover gets cut when it should the flow comes to an end about the time it starts. If it is a late cut we get a real good flow. Wind and rain when the canola is flowering will cut down flowering time. I do not think it is the flowers that are changing, more it is the farming practice. A few years ago in our part of the country we would have 20 farmers seeding canola over a period of several days and this would spread out the flow. Now we have a couple of farmers seeding the same farms in a day or two and this sure changes the amount of days the bees get to harvest. In our part of the world the types of crops being seeded has changed as well. We went from a sea of wheat to a world of yellow. Now we are seeing more beans and corn entering the picture. A lot of farmers here are getting up in years so we see herds of cattle now gone and with that so goes the alfalfa and clovers.

I agree also Ian, those farmers that cannot get their work done in a timely fashion are a beekeepers best friend.
 
#252 · (Edited by Moderator)
I agree with Roland 100%, when I first started with bees in Mass. during the golden rod flow i got the smelly sock smell. We had 3 years of drought and I noticed that the 4th year with normal rain, the sock didn't smell. I watched one specific field of golden rod over the years go from being totally yellow to now when I drive by it, it has very little golden rod, yet hasn't been overgrown with trees etc.

When I moved to n.y. was amazed the first year, I was back in golden rod heaven. I help another beek pull his honey, his best yard over the last 10 years has become his worst. We were discussing it after pulling honey and driving away from the yard, I said look at the fields, 10 years ago they were all goldenrod when I moved here, now the napp weed has taken over all the fields around here(not the same problem in Mass. as the areas I watch still don't have napp weed). Now napp weed makes a fine honey, but from what I can see golden rod makes alot more honey per acre and the napp weed slows down blooming so you pull most of it and with little or no golden rod the hives end up lighter. I have adjusted my pulling of honey(even though my buddy says I'm crazy) to the 1st of sept when the golden rod is just really starting to produce and my hives go into winter heavy, costs me honey production. Now when I first moved up here, none of the beeks I know had feeders, now more of them are making and using them.

The other thing that is changing up here is what was normally the white clover time for a honey flow seems to be drying up. I have three yards that 3 years ago started producing a brownish honey after bass wood honey was pulled but b/4 chineese bambo comes in, my buddy is 76 and had never seen it b/4, gave some to our resident tast tester and he can't identify it, now there hasn't been any obvious changes in the crops in the area, so we assume that they are working something that was always there but not what they prefered to work, so what is it? where did the prefered weed go? this area also is deficient in golden rod bloom and these three yards need to be fed each year.

Another beek on another forum that normally is very observant has stated over many times, the state he is in 30 years ago got a golden rod flow every year, now he is lucky to get one once in 10 years. What is causing it?? good question. things they are always changing, new weeds, lots of my golden rod has turned into corn when the price of milk went up, all the WHIPS land I spent time finding and getting locations on is now being farmed, my buddy has started to shrink his yards down to smaller yards like I have because of the changes, I watch alot of the commercial yards around and they aren't cutting down the # of hives per location so I would expect there lb's per hive is going down while they are in N.Y.
 
#253 ·
I wonder how much GMO and other chemicals both sprayed on crops, generally all over (I even read in Pa of the state game lands being sprayed with something a year or two ago to curb gypsi moth infestations) along with planes. There's now apparantly aluminum and berillium in the ground which would change what can grow readilly in our soil. Would this all explain why 20+ years ago the forrage was different and better?
 
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