Pesticide poisoning - Any suggestions?

While I'm not disputing your story, I have a few issues with your diagnosis. First let me state that I absolutely despise these mosquito treatment companies. Seems like a service designed to cater to the slice of the population that can't be bothered by even one little mosquito buzzing around their porch at night. But I really don't think this is the root of the problem. What reason do your bees have to visit those neat manicured lawns and landscapes? They are pretty much devoid of all foraging material. I am a full time landscaper and have been for over 20 years. I rarely see bees at these types of neighborhoods. They aren't on the lawns because the lawns are treated for weeds. They aren't on the shrubs because a lot of people plant low maintenance plants that don't get big and rarely flower. The people that do install large perennial gardens with lots of flowering shrubs do so to attract pollinators and would most likely not use a mosquito service. These mosquito services will fog the shrubs around the house and other shaded damp areas where mosquitos might hang out. This is a small percentage of the total area bees would be potentially foraging. But why would they be there? If you needed to stock up on food for the week are you going to go to the grocery store? Or the mini mart gas station on the corner? Your going to go to the grocery store. These bees are on a farm. Unless the farm is completely surrounded on all sides by miles of these mosquito obsessed neighborhoods they will go somewhere else. As for the mosquito trucks that fog for the city, I have two hives behind my house that I treat as my rehab area since I can watch them closer. All my other hives are in other yards further away. My city fogs for mosquitos once a month all summer long. The fogging truck passes less than 25yds from where my hives are. I usually place a sheet over them the night the fogging is to take place. But last year I forgot a few times and it was too late to run out once I heard the truck at night. I never have had one issue with those hives either when I covered them or when I didn't. One of my other yards is a tree farm where we regularly spray for weed control multiple times per year. It is surrounded by farmland where farmers are spraying insecticides and herbicides throughout the season. Across the street is a large apple orchard that also sprays insecticides on the apple trees. These bees are literally surrounded by large scale spraying of all kinds. I haven't had one problem concerning poisoning in over 5 years at that particular location. This makes me wonder how homes in a neighborhood devoid of most foraging material could be affecting your bees from their mosquito and lawn treatment services. How can I explain your findings then? I can't, and maybe it turns out you are right. I just know that diagnosing problems with bees can be extremely difficult for me. I wouldn't be so quick to place the blame on these fogging companies. That being said if they all went out of business tomorrow it would be for the better in my opinion.

@Johnnymms I, like you, doubt it's the neighborhood, but something isn't right there whatever it is so that's why I said to Apologize to the farmer and move the hives away.

The only times I've suspected poisoning was when I was standing in front of the hive watching as half the hive evacuated right there in front of me into a pile on the ground shivering and shaking and dying as I watched. That has happened twice in the past to me, the hives left a pile of dead bees on the ground right in front of the entrance. But both times, the hives recovered, so that was good. I never knew for sure what the problem was, but my thinking was it had to be poison of some kind, but maybe it wasn't?

I used to blame the mosquito spraying here for my hive problems, they spray by crop duster plane I think 2 a week. It used to be once a week but the past couple of years I see the plane twice a week. They start spraying around summer solstice or right after it, at the same time that queens start slowing laying and mites start gaining percentage over the amount of brooding done. Once I started treating and starting sometime in July, my heavy die offs each year disappeared, or close to it. Last year I lost 2 out of 3 but last year I was 2 months later getting the mite treatments on. Shame on me. The two or three years previously I had zero losses, and that was when I had newer comb and practiced mite treatments earlier in the season.

First, thank you for the well thought out replies. I appreciate it.

There is a ton of forage in these neighborhoods. Many, many fruit trees, huge blackberry patches and gardens. The poplars are blooming right now, as well as all kinds of flowering bushes and trees. The flow is full-on right now. The neighborhood and the whole area in general really is beautiful from a floral point of view.

Perhaps it's not mosquito spray, but the spray service trucks are all over. From what I personally know, bagworms are the big thing they would be spraying for in May. Those things are a plague in this area. Also the new invasion of Lantern Flies. They have been in the news a lot lately, and people are reacting.

The sudden, shocking disappearance of bees while there is a strong queen and lots of brood is puzzling. Yes, there are a lot dead bees on the ground, now that I think about it. And there were quite a few walkers on the ground a couple of weeks ago. With the hot-cold-hot-cold weather, I thought they were just caught out on a cold morning. I wasn't thinking poison, but looking back... Yeah.

Even so, no greasy bees or shivering or acting strange in any way inside the hives. They look good. This makes what the farmer said about the main spraying being over fit . The spraying is done, so maybe the damage is over? I'm not worried about the honey being poisoned, because the hives have been getting lighter and lighter. NO honey to harvest. I removed several supers yesterday. Dead empty, not even drawn out.

So, this gives me a plan...
I'm going to inspect them again and bring syrup for the two worst hives. I'll do a mite wash to see what I find. They were clean early in the season, but we will see. The laying worker hive will be the loaded one, so I'll start there.

If these hives are loaded with mites, I don't want to bring them back here. I don't want "mite bombs" in my yard here which is prospering. I'll see if I can treat them in place, and at least salvage the hives.

If the mite load is high, I'm going to OAV them, and I might even open the Apivar strips that I have for emergencies. Not going to get honey from these hives, but hopefully, I can save the bees.

I will report back. Again, thank you very much for your replies!

FiveJ,
Thanks. I tend to agree with you, but maybe I'm missing something.

FONH,
Clue me in on the joke. I can always use a good laugh, and I don't mind laughing at myself.

The only thing I can think of that you may be referring to is a statement I read here before. Someone tells a story of a flood washing his bees away, and a bunch of people respond with, "What is your mite count? Have you treated for mites???"

If that is what you were thinking, I get it. That was pretty funny.

Oldtimer,
There are a lot of dead of bees on the ground, but I don't go over there too much, so I wasn't around while they were dying, so I didn't witness them actually dying. I'll take a pic when I go back tomorrow.

It will be interesting to see what I find. The farmer says they were a lot more active today, but he is rallying for me to not take the bees away. I have to do what is best, though.

There is a ton of brood in the boxes, so the new bees might have been doing orientation flights today. I need to get some syrup on them ASAP. The longer they stay home and eat from the feeder, the better, if there is indeed poison out there.

fieldsofnaturalhoney said:

Agree with the advice & skepticism of some. Maybe, I should have left the puzzling sentence out of the quote, because lots of healthy brood?, & nurse bees, but lack of foragers, could mean a large die off of them due to pesticide. @thill , but the funny part to me was assuming there mite count was still low from when “they were clean earlier in the season” (how long ago was this exactly?), And possibly creating a “mite bomb”, (we all know who gets the blame for these)🤣, that you don’t want to move it to another one of your yards., why would the location really matter? If that is what they have become? Bees will find it., Okay, I’ll go back to my cell🤐

Click to expand...

One thing I should have done is put a ??? in the title of this thread, as I don't really know.

No, I do not assume the mite count is low. That's why I posted that I need to check and treat them, if needed. They were clean when I brought them there in March, but who knows about now, without checking? There may be tons of hives in the area for all I know.

The hive that went queenless probably IS a mite bomb, due to all the drone brood. I'll know tomorrow, and will treat them accordingly. I put a clean, healthy hive over them recently, so those bees need to be protected.

My location here at the house is very low for mites. They have very low or zero counts anytime I check, even long after last treating them. Even so, I do OAV every 3 days for a 21 day cycle a few times a year, and I have yet to have a hive fail or to have high mite loads. If the hives at the farm are loaded, I'm not bringing them back here until they are under control.

I appreciate all of the helpful comments. Thanks for the suggestion to cycle out the comb, Roland. That sounds right. There is not much or any honey in the two big hives to pull, hence the need to feed. The brood box comb is full of brood, so I'm going to wait and see what happens with that first.

It will be interesting to see how this ends. If it's mites, that's relatively easy to deal with. If poison still seems likely, I'll have to strip them down and try to save the bees, probably taking them away, if they don't recover pretty quickly. If mite treatment and feeding saves them, great. If they die out, lesson learned. I guess we will see...