I was out doing some beaver trapping today on a farm. I got the landowner into bees this past spring. He motioned me over when i came up out of the creek and wanted me to check his hives. I went over and the first thing i noticed where live bees crawing around in the snow. 2 of which had fecal matter on their wings. It was only 30 degrees but i thought i had to check. I popped the top on the first hive and the cluster was smaller than my fist. Lots of honey but obviously done for! The other hive was a split off of the first one. It felt light so i pulled the cover off fast and threw on the super of honey off of the dying hive next to it. Now for my question. What do you guys think was wrong with the first hive? I never have seen that before.
my first thought was the queenless split either failed to make a queen, or didn't make a very good queen.
a small weak split making an emergency queen isn't able to feed the queen cell as well as a strong hive, and the result can be a poor queen, leading to a weak colony.
i learned this lesson myself this year, and lost a hive because of it.
i would make sure it was not american foul brood,
but next on the list would be mites, followed by nosema.
the old kind was obvious because the bees had diarrea and pooped all over the outside of the hive body.
the new kind doesn't have this tell tale sign, you have take samples and look under a microscope. but, the outward sign can look like starvation.
the fecal matter on the dying hives wings could have been from dysentary, and this can spread to the other hive. hopefully putting the honey frames on from the dying hive didn't spread anything.
(have you made sure it's not american foul brood?)
I hope the donor gets some flying weather so they do not get an overload of feces cleaning up the deadout. You probably did what you had to, but no telling what killed them.
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