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Ok... I need answers

15K views 54 replies 18 participants last post by  Acebird 
#1 ·
Checked my hive today to find no live bees at all, maybe 300 dead. They were last checked (very quickly) on Dec.22 (it was warm temps) with tons of bees and stores. Stores are all there, no mites on the bottom board or feces, no AFB, no shb, conducted an alcohol wash on the dead bees.... nothing.
Why would all the bees leave? It makes no sense.
 
#3 ·
How close was the cluster To the honey? How tight was the cluster? Softball? Basketball? How cold has it been for the last few weeks?

I am thinking the 300 bees sounds like a small cluster and if it was cold enough, the swarm had issues even move a frame away to get to the honey.

Chris in NJ
 
#6 ·
The bees were on two frames towards the top right next to the honey. Literally, there wer 300 or so dead bees left in the hive. Very few on the bottom board maybe 20.

I will post pics tomorrow. I did have three hives... down to one.

CCD is when the hive just dies right? All the bees dead all at once? The bees in this hive just took off. Wierd that I didn't see them clustered in a nearby bush or tree. Man... this has my mind reeling.
 
#9 ·
First you would only see mite feces in cells if the colony had been actively producing brood. Second…if the bees were dead, the mites would have fallen off and an alcohol wash wouldn’t have done any good. Third….if there were only a few hundred remaining bees and all the mites had fallen off…even a moderately high infestation would not leave a huge number of mites on the bottom.
I am not saying that it was mites…I’m only saying that you haven’t established that it wasn’t.
Did you test/treat during the season?
 
#11 ·
I did test during the season and never found a mite. I checked the bottom board many times.... no mites. Never treated simply because there was no mites to be found.
This morning I took the hive apart completely, no dead mites. You would think I'd find one if I had a problem.

Wierd thing that may help is that I found the queen on a frame with 100 or so bees. All dead of course. NO superceedure cells, NO queen cells, nothing to indicate she was new.

Lots of head scratching going on this morning. lol
 
#13 ·
I did test during the season and never found a mite.
I'm not looking to be confrontational but....all bee colonies in North America have mites. Rather than presuming that I had no mites....I'd reevaluate the testing technique.
Again....I am not saying that varroa were a factor in your bee loss...
 
#14 ·
I appreciate the replies and advice.
Shouldnt I find one dead mite on the bottom board? The bees cant get at it to clean it.
I will say however that I have learned a lot this year and my proceedures on keeping bees will change. I have to help eliminate or at least decrease the chances of this happening again.
I don't believe you are being confrontational beemandan. I'll be the first to let you know though. lol
 
#16 ·
CCD the bees leave and can't navigate to find there way back. Usually leaving a small number of bees and the queen.

There many reasons a hive will abscond. You found the queen so they did not abscond.

How much honey left? Save it for you or your next hive.

I agree there has to be mites somewhere in your hive. Do you have a bottom entrance all the way open? Maybe wind or insect cleared the mite off your bottom board.

A closed SBB with a tray or sticky paper will hold on to those mites, along with other pests.
 
#17 ·
Sorry about your hive Mr. Beeman :( So there were two separate clusters, queen w/ the smaller ? distance between/orientation in box ? which varroa test(s) did you perform/frequency ?
Agree w/ :
-Flower, SBB
-beemandan, - the varroa test you described is not instructive

My feeling ? What was the temp on Dec 22nd ? Warm is a relative term, my guess is if I had popped up for dinner @ your place from MD,(In my LearJet 75) :) we would have disagreed on the matter. I would have come in Carhart coveralls and you'd be in shorts :) (My cousins are in/around Imlay city) Be that as it may..... When you checked on the 22nd 300 bees looked to you like tons. Why ? Cause they came rushing to the top of the combs to preserve heat. Also, in the hive you describe,(a colony of 300) you are looking for 9 mites, is perhaps a good way to consider varroa ? (my admittedly limited understanding) others will correct my #'s, along with everything else :)
Conclusion reached knowing absolutely nothing :)
in the end they froze, why were they so weak ? have to go back another inspection. Had the situation been known, could 300+queen have been, extra insulated ? divided off inside hive ? heated ? brought in ? and wintered successfully. would have made for interesting experiment :)
Cheers,
Drew
 
#25 ·
not odd... it was warm, to you :) also not odd that 3-400 seemed like 30-40k when you pop the top it the cold :) If 30k left in winter without queen that would be an event ! you had referred to an alcohol wash test, answers to my other ?'s could be interesting for other reasons if you do post-mortum
 
#28 · (Edited)
If 30k left in winter without queen that would be an event !
This could easily be a varroa related collapse. One classic failure mode is that a large population of parasitized bees go into winter. They begin dying. As long as there are flying days, the remaining bees will haul off the carcasses. And over a relatively short time, what was once a hugely populated hive becomes a cluster too small to maintain survivable temperatures when it turns cold. In this fashion, it often seems that the biggest hives are the first to fail.
 
#30 ·
CCD:

Collapsing Colonies
An insufficient number of bees to maintain the amount of brood in the colony.

A workforce composed largely of younger adult bees.

The presence of a queen.

The cluster's reluctance to consume food provided to them by the beekeeper.


Collapsed Colonies

Complete absence of adult bees in colonies, with few or no dead bees in or around colonies.

The presence of capped brood.

The presence of food stores--both honey and bee bread--that are not robbed by other bees or typical colony pests, such as small hive beetles or wax moths. If robbed, the robbing is delayed by a number of days.
 
#33 ·
I had something similar to you MrBeeman, a really strong colony going into winter, only to find a completely empty hive in December. Not a dead bee on the bottom board and none on the frames, except young bees trying to hatch out if their cells. I chalk that one up to Varroa though, stupid pest!

The good thing is spring is around the corner and so is swarm season!
 
#34 ·
Presence of a queen and stores not robbed out are hallmarks of CCD. I lost 8 hives last year in the winter to varroa. Just as you described BeeGhost. But there was no queen, only emerging young bees. I knew they had mites and choose not to treat. But the absence of mits, presence of a queen in Beeman's hive favors CCD not mites. Nosema Ceranae is a factor in CCD if I remeber correctly. It does not have the defecation symptom as nosema apis does. Bees get sick and fly away to die. Queen stays put.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosema_ceranae
 
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