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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.
 
#66 ·
Well no doubt grasshopper spraying is a problem.....where it occurs. As are mites when they aren't controlled. Grasshopper spraying primarily occurs in the grasslands of the west where they breed in ground that is undisturbed by farming. I saw a little of it myself this summer, fortunately it was early enough in the season that the bees had time to recover. however some of these reports are in areas that are heavily farmed and in those cases there is suspicion of fungicides and other farm chemicals. I have no idea what the cause or causes might be in each case only that "all the usual suspects" need to be considered and certainly varroa has a pretty long rap sheet.
 
#67 ·
for example-
one yard all with hives started late with one single frame of brood and new queen. ALL equipment totally brand new.
By August these are all thriving doubles with new comb. Mite free and treated.

then the brood that is found while we are extracting is put on these hives daily, one box at a time as needed. meaning a few boxes a day.
using these hives as an incubator for the brood to hatch out of the comb and give the hives some extra population at the same time.
after some time passes and the brood hatches and i went to take the boxes off and what do i find.

now i realize what i was doing was taking a spoon full of mites and putting them in the hive.
4 good hives left in the whole yard???
moral of the story is that something came with that brood and destroyed the hives.
and that something was the varroa mite.

these characteristics held true through out our operation this fall.

Just as Lpender said. boxes and boxes plugged with honey, must have been lots of bees at some point.
 
#69 ·
My first encounters with varroa years ago was pretty much what you describe, lots of bees mid summer but by fall you end up with a whole bunch of honey and a few hundred bees. Of course that's a pretty easy diagnosis as the bottom boards will be red with dead mites. On the other hand if there are lots of dead bees in the entrance it could well be a mite vectored virus though if mite counts are low and there are "crawlers" I would be looking at other potential causes. In any case one should always first eliminate varroa as the cause before looking elsewhere. It continues to be the worst and, with the exception of afb, the most easily diagnosed. Lets just remember, though, bees are in lots and lots of different conditions under many varied management scenarios. There is almost certainly no "one size fits all" solution.
 
#70 ·
Yes I do agree pesticides is a problem. Pesticides used outside the hive, pesticides used inside the hive. Their residues surely are having the effect on the health of our hives. One part of the puzzle.
The other part of the puzzle is colony diseases, varroa, nosema, all the 7 different viral infections they can get, afb
I believe, as many others do, that it is the drag down in colony health from external AND internal exposure which allow these diseases to thrive.

But all this stuff is getting boring right,.? It has been said again and again, no one person to blame, yet the problem still exists and our bees are not performing as they once did.

So lets blame the farmers!!! lets blame the chemical companies!!! lets string them up and get some justice here!!! Our bees are dying! Science isnt giving us a clear answer! Lets make our own answer!!!
 
#71 ·
The thing about pesticide exposure is its effect on the organism does not discriminate. But I believe the reason why we are seeing so much variation between exposures is the interaction between the diseases present in the hive.

Viral infections especially, but we know very little about these diseases to be able to comment on them,...

But we know alot about Nosema and its effect on bees. But lets look past the worker bees and look at the queen herself. when she gets sick she takes the colony down.
I notice as does most other beekeepers that queens younger than 1 years of age performs better than queens older than 2 years of age. It never use to be that way. 2 year old queens use to be in their prime. I seriously believe nosema has alot to do with this.
 
#72 ·
Why not ask the question from a new perspective about nosema, why do we assume it is starting from inside our operations, what about asking the questions from the persective of the outside environment? Is something outside the hive enhancing the nosema levels?
 
#73 ·
A couple of years ago we had Dave Tarpy speak to our local bee club on queen bee health. He showed a chart which I believe is in the Sammataro/Yoder book on honeybee health...chart showed nosema levels in queens over decades (back to 1940's oe earlier? sorry...not with my books right now). Queens over time showed varying levels of nosema - 10%, 20%,etc., up and down over the years. Queens in 2010 (think it was then - most recent looked at for that particular study) showed nosema levels at 0%.

We asked why 0%? What is different all of a sudden? Dave said that the queen producers are "feeding the snot out of them with fumagillin".

If there is truth to the report that fumagillin use increases nosema spore production and the idea that healthy gut microbes are a key to honeybee health then ?????

Maybe "outside" the environment is actually "inside"?

Ramona
 
#75 ·
I have had problems with finding dead hives through out the year, no apparent reason why the colony fails. Finding broodless hives in spring, finding broodless hive under 5 boxes, finding broodless hives in fall. Die outs. no rime nor rhythm.
Why? the queen just shuts down. The hive doesnt replace her, why?

more and more Im suspecting Nosema for this.

last spring we received one of our batchs of queens from Hawaii that were absolute failures. And if the hive accepted them, they did not lay. Guess what, nosema was the culprit.

you suggest to look outside the hive, absolutely. Everything outside the hive influences what happens inside the hive. But what Im hearing is blame being singled out. If there were proof for that blame at least we would have something to act on.




you know that she is a witch, she acts like a witch, she looks like a witch, but you cant prove that she is a witch,
so you kill the witch to stop her from doing witch things.
the only problem is that there is no such things as witches
 
#77 ·
Checked a few hives yesterday. They looked good. Some were clustered pretty tight. Others were open and the temperatures of the inner covers suggested there was still some brood rearing going on. The season was generally poor but I spent a small fortune on pollen ptties and plenty of syrup.Treated for nosema but I have not done a spore count recently. Low varroa levels, but they were treated in the fall with thymol. We also changed all our queens this season with our home grown queens.

So far I would have to say I am pleased with my bees.

Jean-Marc
 
#80 ·
Early fall when brood production slows/ends is the time when varroa damage reaches its peak. The bigger and older the colony, the harder and faster they collapse. I am not going to argue this with you. I will only say that without knowing the level of varroa infestation in your hives, to insist that their collapse wasn’t varroa related is denial.
 
#82 ·
Back in the 90's when varroa first hit I had a whole load of 500+ hives that went untreated and I lost every single one. They were almost exactly the way you described your losses, lots of honey and hardly a bee. It was pretty easy to pull the honey crop though :) This really has nothing to do with big chemical companies though just learning how to diagnose varroa problems and to help some get answers on what may have happened to their bees.
 
#83 ·
John: it's not the only reason it can happen but it's probably the most common. Just take a close look at the bottom board if there are lots of dead mites then I would be certain of it
 
#87 ·
That wasn't the message I sent. What I responded to was your certainty that your losses weren't mite related at the same time describing conditions that were ideal for high mite losses. If you are open to the possibilities...as you say...then I say.....carry on.
 
#85 ·
I would listen to Mr. Lyon if I were you and not go off in a snit. Lots of old grouches here but if you put up with them, there is a lot to learn. If you choose to be treatment free, you will be a fine customer buying bees from someone who has a stategy of some kind to control the mites. There are treatment free folks but only if you limit treatment definition to chemical treatment. Some genetics work better than others. There is a lot to learn period. Don't go away mad.
 
#89 ·
Vance is right! I'm treatment free and I buy new bees every year. 1989 was the start of the mite year for my Dad and I. 1300+ hive and only seven live hive in the spring. Each hive dead with 60+ lb each, and very few dead bees left in the hives. Years of supporting the chemical company for hope that something good would come from it, and didn't.
Ready do we have the same problem or a new one.
Why is the queens that are produced today just throw away queens???:digging:
 
#86 ·
i think its obvious that both problems exist, whats not obvious is why the health of our bees seems to go in these cycles.
i think, and i hope im right that we will not see these same problems next year.

you see these dead hives with only a few bee's, a queen, lots of honey, no dead bee's, also not many mites.
the reason there are not many mites is the same reason there are not many bee's.
the bee's fly away with their sickness to try and save the colony

And on top of that they have to deal with pesticides
 
#92 ·
so if i treat for mites once a month all year long, and then feed the bees nutra bee in the fall your saying i will have live hives come november.:thumbsup: i really am curious how often some of you are treating. i treated once in the spring and 3 times in the fall. not enough?? too much?? where am i different from those of you that still have good bees this year.....is natural pollen building their gut microbes up??
 
#94 ·
.....is natural pollen building their gut microbes up??
I want you to understand, Im not defending chemical use amoungst farmers or beekeeper alike. What Im saying is we have not been able to bring about enough hard direct proof to implicate Chemical X killing Bee hive B systemically. That direct link has not been made on a systemic basis. Until then we have to figure out a way to manage our hives in this chemical agriculture world.
I dont like it, just as you dont like it, but its the reality of our situation. We need our association to keep looking and spending the time creating the links and proof. Nobody else is going to do it for us but ourselves. Sound familiar?

We must not come across the wrong way and making farmers out to be our enemies. I hear alot of that. Its the farmers we make our living off of. Farmers do not have a choice either, just as we do not have a choice whether to treat our diseases or not. Its just the way our economy has built itself. And Im not going to debate that here at all....


If giving the bees a diet supplement to help replace whatever modern day agriculture "MAY" be taking away from the bees food is probably one of the simplest short term solutions we have at our disposal right now. And if anything it will buy us time to be able to figure what is going on.
Because perhaps there isnt even a problem there at all.... It may be something completely different... Like Virus...

Just my opinion
 
#95 · (Edited)
I got the results yesterday from the lab tests for bees, wax, & pollen & I have to say I know less today than I did when the samples were sent in.
Nothing out of the ordinary was found and the remarks were made as to how clean all the samples are for no chemicals & what not.
Almost at this point in time wish there had been a smoking gun so to speak & something to place the blame on.
As I said in the past posts this is not effecting the entire outfit by any means. A few miles down the road the bees are looking fine & no loss.
Then there are 2 yards of comb honey bees that made a record crop this year are going into winter in great shape with no losses.
Frustrating is one word for this but as I tell my son " If this deal was easy everyone would have bees & honey would maybe worth a buck at best " then I also would be kidding only myself if I thought this deal would get any easier after 35 years.
My last job of 20 plus years we always preached the 3-C's.
Cause, Correction, & Cure.
Here I have no Cause, no way of implementing a Correction, that could result in a possible Cure!
 
#100 ·
Okay, my turn to get yelled at. Please do not bully another member until you bully me. :D

I see some of my bees doing good and others doing poorly, or I don't see them anymore.

Have been hearing of other beeks with terrible looking bees in the commercial sector, not so much with sideliners or hobbiests.

My thoughts are as follows:

1. Mites: Hives that skipped a cranberry pollination and were split in late June before heading up to NY look good. All my hives were treated with Apigaurd in early July. Mite levels are back up in most of the hives, but higher in the hives that weren't split.

2. Weather: Early spring= more mites. dry late spring and fall led to poor looking bees by late June through July (Bees turned around when they hit the ground in NY.) Little nectar all summer until knotweed in late August. cool weather in late september and october ended fresh pollen sources which made them eat stored pollen.

3. Fungicides, someone back there mentioned them. Fungicides, I believe, make pollen almost worthless. My theory is the bees got some sprayed pollen in blueberries, but stored it because they had good oak pollen at the same time that they preferred. Bees in cranberries are expected to get loaded with fungicides. When the pollen stopped coming in in the fall, the bees had to use stored pollen wich contained fungicides, which further stressed the bees. Include with that the extremly high mite load at this time of the year mentioned by others. Add the affect of viral loads which the bees can't fight because they have a cold and have been living off a box of ramen noodles, so to speak. I know why my bees went backwards, looked like a good 3 boxes of bees first week of October, and by the third week they were averaging 6 frames of bees. Those bees that didn't go to cranberries got less fungicide, and their stored pollen was split in half.

Ok, you guys get it, thats what you've been saying. but I have almost empty and empty hives that aren't littered with mites on the bottom board. Next year will be better, eh?

This is when Keith says you need Nutra-Bee. (No east coast supplier. Yet.;) )
Regards,
Tim Stewart
Stewart's Apiaries
 
#107 ·
My theory is the bees got some sprayed pollen in blueberries, but stored it because they had good oak pollen at the same time that they preferred.
If I may ask a question. I thought that oak pollen was bad for the bees. I read somewhere that if they took oak pollen that it would kill the brood. Am I wrong in this? I have read that blueberries are also bad and perhaps this answeres that side of it. "some sprayed pollen in blueberries"
 
#101 · (Edited)
The reason I requeen each year isnt because I think the queens are bad It's because #1 I want a brood break #2 a certain percentage always begin to fail the second year (if its even 10% i consider that high and #3 it's so doggone cheap and easy to do down south in the early spring
 
#104 ·
tim,

so is the theory that the fungicides don't allow proper fermentation of the bee bread? any science out on that yet?
Im hearing more and more about this. I do not believe there is any conclusions on this but I do believe it is being looked at,

Personally I need to see some science on it before I will draw any conclusions. There are many types of fungicides being used today, and our bees seem to be in contact with them all because most of the fungicides target flowers.
 
#105 ·
I dont get it
Good. Just it looked like some guys got a little hot water thrown at them, and I need a hot shower. :scratch:

No, I don't have any proof, just thoughts. Draw your own conclusions. But you've (or at least some of you) have already done that.

I don't think we know enough about bees, little tummy microbes, fungicides, pollen, mites, or viruses. But we do have a decent way to combat them. Oh, I forgot nosema. Does anyone know anything about that? lol

Tim
 
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