[davemal]

A month ago a couple hives here in mid-MD starting exhibiting what appears to be symptoms of chronic bee paralysis virus. Have yet to do mite count, but hives treated with Apivar in July then OAV at Thanksgiving and OAV again mid-Jan. Two side-by-site colonies affected. Think it is CBPV? Twitching, dead bees on ground. Any cure or should I destroy colonies. If the later, can you suggest a I could give the comb in order to reuse? Grrr. Here is a short video.

[video]https://youtu.be/3qHs6Yr-Bgw [/video]

 

[Oldtimer]

I know of no cure but hoping someone can suggest one.

Burning may be a bit drastic, I have had this in my hives but mostly they recover, although the hive may be non productive for a season. Out of my 320 hives it would probably be affecting maybe a couple of hives at any one time. I have given up on eradicating it because it's endemic here, just have to live with it, it's a cost of doing business.

Hoping that breeding may eventually produce a resistant bee, but don't know if that will happen or not. Here's a video of one of my hives with it, this hive had it on and off for 2 seasons but is now fully recovered.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAJVMao71P0

 

[Oldtimer]

Should add to that I think some bees are resistant because my hives are in clumps of 4 with the entrances of each pair of hives nearly touching. An infection will often spread to the hive next door as there is considerable drift, but that hive will often throw it back off sometimes in a matter of weeks. Based on what I've seen of this, I think only a minority of hives are susceptible to get it in a serious dose. Which does give some hope for eventually breeding it out.
I also think it is worse when there is a pollen shortage.

 

[davemal]

I know of no cure but hoping someone can suggest one.

Burning may be a bit drastic, I have had this in my hives but mostly they recover, although the hive may be non productive for a season. Out of my 320 hives it would probably be affecting maybe a couple of hives at any one time. I have given up on eradicating it because it's endemic here, just have to live with it, it's a cost of doing business.

Hoping that breeding may eventually produce a resistant bee, but don't know if that will happen or not. Here's a video of one of my hives with it, this hive had it on and off for 2 seasons but is now fully recovered.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAJVMao71P0

These comments give me hope. I would not burn, btw, I would shake into tub of soapy water. Regardless, seems like our experiences are similar. One of the two hives has packed away a decent amount of honey in its three supers. The other has zero stored in the supers. Will remove those supers today. I have 18 or so other colonies in the apiary and none of them are affected. I will do a mite count on these two. I wonder it mites are the only way for a colony to get CBPV or by endemic do you mean it is unavoidable? Can any comb taken from these hives be reused? Maybe after dipping in water/bleach solution and air drying?

 

[AR Beekeeper]

CBPV predates the varroa mite, so the varroa is not necessary for the bees to get the virus. Having a heavy mite load stresses the bees so they may display symptoms of the virus when they would not have with few mites.

Here a colony with CBPV is weakened but usually doesn't die. The colony may show symptoms for 2 or 3 years, but then they go away. If the colony becomes very weak and you have extra strong colonies that you wish to reduce in strength, shake a few frames of young bees at the entrance of the colony. The nurse age bees will enter the colony and strengthen it's work force.

Comb reuse I can't comment on because I can't say for sure that using frames between colonies has caused the virus to spread. It does seem that re-queening makes the problem go away.

 

[Oldtimer]

I wonder it mites are the only way for a colony to get CBPV or by endemic do you mean it is unavoidable?

By endemic I just meant widely distributed.

 

[davemal]

By endemic I just meant widely distributed.

That is what I thought, thus unavoidable and I could treat all day every day and not necessarily stop this type of virus. Thanks.

 

[Tennessee's Bees LLC]

Have 1 hive with it myself this year. The laying patterns of the queen were great but we killed her anyways and dropped a cell due to how many of the older bees were twitching and dying on the ground. I fed some sugar syrup with essential oil thyme just to see if that may help clear their guts a bit (probably not). Mite count was very low but I am hitting with OA before the queen caps her first round of brood. We will see how they respond.

 

[davemal]

I broke the affected colony down to a single deep. Am combining with a strong nuc to see what happens. The comb that remains in the single deep has, of course, been exposed to the virus. It is what it is. But the comb I removed is in the freezer for a couple days. Today I will remove it and soak it in a bleach solution to kill the virus. At least I think that bleach will kill all viruses. I was thinking of putting a half cup of regular bleach in a gallon of water. I think that would be strong enough. What do you think?

 

[AR Beekeeper]

That solution should be strong enough. It might work just as well if you spray the comb with a spray bottle and allow it to dry. Remember to use cold water to mix the bleach solution. Hot water reduces the effectiveness of the solution.

 

[Cloverdale]

A month ago a couple hives here in mid-MD starting exhibiting what appears to be symptoms of chronic bee paralysis virus. Have yet to do mite count, but hives treated with Apivar in July then OAV at Thanksgiving and OAV again mid-Jan. Two side-by-site colonies affected. Think it is CBPV? Twitching, dead bees on ground. Any cure or should I destroy colonies. If the later, can you suggest a I could give the comb in order to reuse? Grrr. Here is a short video.”

So did you find pile of dead bees in front of the entrance? Two kinds of CBPV. 3 hives had it 2 years ago, those three were good honey producers, never saw the dead bees again. If you look at the NationalHoney Show Video good talk on that and other diseases.

https://youtu.be/z0B9o4GHq7U

 

[davemal]

A month ago a couple hives here in mid-MD starting exhibiting what appears to be symptoms of chronic bee paralysis virus. Have yet to do mite count, but hives treated with Apivar in July then OAV at Thanksgiving and OAV again mid-Jan. Two side-by-site colonies affected. Think it is CBPV? Twitching, dead bees on ground. Any cure or should I destroy colonies. If the later, can you suggest a I could give the comb in order to reuse? Grrr. Here is a short video.”

So did you find pile of dead bees in front of the entrance? Two kinds of CBPV. 3 hives had it 2 years ago, those three were good honey producers, never saw the dead bees again. If you look at the NationalHoney Show Video good talk on that and other diseases.

https://youtu.be/z0B9o4GHq7U

Yes, dead bees on ground out front. Starting to smell. Enjoying the URL. CBPR section begins at time stamp 33:50.

AR, good idea about spraying. BTW, made my own bee strainer: