Let me preface this by saying this is only happening to 1 hive out of nine in this out yard...
Treated hive for Varroa using MAQS on 4/5/14, mite levels were at 7 using an alcohol wash. Mite levels in this hive were still high for some reason after treatment and were 4 per 300 bees using an alcohol wash when treatment was over on 4/12/14 but now would have to wait to re-treat. Ended up losing queen at some point during treatment because when the treatment was over on the 12th there were some eggs but they appeared to be close to hatching and as I found out later the hive was unable to requeen itself. All the capped brood from the treatment appeared to emerge normally.
Still no eggs being laid on 4/30/14 but it had only been 18 days since the treatment was completed and I was leaving on a trip so just to be safe I added a frame of brood from another hive. When I got back from my trip that frame had been capped and no queen cells had been made from it. Went through the hive looking for evidence of a queen but much to my surprise in the bottom deep found evidence of laying workers, some multi egg worker cells and the drone comb was totally filled with it.
Added another frame of brood with some eggs as well until I decided what to do with it... Went in today and found that a lot of the dead brood on the frame I added on 4/30, at least half of the brood has emerged but there are quite a few cells with(20%) dead bees inside. These bees appear to have made it to the larval stage where their eyes darken but then died. Some of the caps have been removed, some have just a pin prick hole in them and some still have the capping intact. Dug around in the frame quite a bit and tried the rope test for AFB but these dead larvae wouldn't rope, they just turn to liquid when stirred which is hardly more viscous that 1:1 sugar water. The ones that have dried out on the bottom of the cells still have the general appearance of a bee, meaning the head is still intact but the body has completely dried out flat and is stuck to the inside of the cell. I did notice a couple of the open cells with dead bees in them had dead Varroa stuck to them.
Is this a case of there was so many phoretic mites that when they had some new brood in the hive they overwhelmed it because all the other brood had emerged? There are a few bees the have emerged with deformed wings but others are emerging fine. Is this Buckeye poisoning? I don't know what it looks like but I've heard you'll find dead larvae and deformed bees. We have a fair amount of Buckeye around here but the stuff close to this bee yard doesn't appear to have started blooming yet although down in elevation a bit it has and who knows where the bees are going because of this severe drought. Is this AFB? Even though I can't get any of the cells to rope, some of them do smell pretty bad.
Any thoughts on this are greatly appreciated and here are some pics,I could only take a few because this hive is real hot now and I couldn't remove my gloves. What should I do with this hive, it's still packed with bees?
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Treated hive for Varroa using MAQS on 4/5/14, mite levels were at 7 using an alcohol wash. Mite levels in this hive were still high for some reason after treatment and were 4 per 300 bees using an alcohol wash when treatment was over on 4/12/14 but now would have to wait to re-treat. Ended up losing queen at some point during treatment because when the treatment was over on the 12th there were some eggs but they appeared to be close to hatching and as I found out later the hive was unable to requeen itself. All the capped brood from the treatment appeared to emerge normally.
Still no eggs being laid on 4/30/14 but it had only been 18 days since the treatment was completed and I was leaving on a trip so just to be safe I added a frame of brood from another hive. When I got back from my trip that frame had been capped and no queen cells had been made from it. Went through the hive looking for evidence of a queen but much to my surprise in the bottom deep found evidence of laying workers, some multi egg worker cells and the drone comb was totally filled with it.
Added another frame of brood with some eggs as well until I decided what to do with it... Went in today and found that a lot of the dead brood on the frame I added on 4/30, at least half of the brood has emerged but there are quite a few cells with(20%) dead bees inside. These bees appear to have made it to the larval stage where their eyes darken but then died. Some of the caps have been removed, some have just a pin prick hole in them and some still have the capping intact. Dug around in the frame quite a bit and tried the rope test for AFB but these dead larvae wouldn't rope, they just turn to liquid when stirred which is hardly more viscous that 1:1 sugar water. The ones that have dried out on the bottom of the cells still have the general appearance of a bee, meaning the head is still intact but the body has completely dried out flat and is stuck to the inside of the cell. I did notice a couple of the open cells with dead bees in them had dead Varroa stuck to them.
Is this a case of there was so many phoretic mites that when they had some new brood in the hive they overwhelmed it because all the other brood had emerged? There are a few bees the have emerged with deformed wings but others are emerging fine. Is this Buckeye poisoning? I don't know what it looks like but I've heard you'll find dead larvae and deformed bees. We have a fair amount of Buckeye around here but the stuff close to this bee yard doesn't appear to have started blooming yet although down in elevation a bit it has and who knows where the bees are going because of this severe drought. Is this AFB? Even though I can't get any of the cells to rope, some of them do smell pretty bad.
Any thoughts on this are greatly appreciated and here are some pics,I could only take a few because this hive is real hot now and I couldn't remove my gloves. What should I do with this hive, it's still packed with bees?
