Author Topic: Dysentery or Nosema?  (Read 2920 times)

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Offline Jen

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Dysentery or Nosema?
« on: April 11, 2018, 03:00:31 pm »
Helping a fellow beek with her hive yesterday. One week ago she inspected this hive and all seemed normal for coming out of winter. A week later, yesterday, we lifted the lid and found large amounts of fresh yellow squirty poop Everywhere, all the frames, on the walls, and a definite strong odor of poop. As we examined the frames we realized that these bees are sick and need help, Pronto! However, the bees don't act sick or despondent. After going thru two hive boxes we stopped looking for the queen and closed it up. Personally, I have never seen this much poop in one hive in just one week. We did some online searching and we came up with 'Dysentery'. But Dysentery and Nosema can resemble each other.

What we want to know is:
 
1) What should my friend do?
2) Is this hive savable
3) Can this mess be cleaned up and the bees health returned?
4) Can the capped honey be washed and saved?
5) Should we do Fumagillin even if it's Dysentery?


 







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Offline neillsayers

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Re: Dysentery or Nosema?
« Reply #1 on: April 11, 2018, 03:39:14 pm »
Jen,

I have no experience with nosema, so I am sitting in to hear what our more experienced keeps have to say.
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Offline Perry

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Re: Dysentery or Nosema?
« Reply #2 on: April 11, 2018, 06:06:33 pm »
Feed some sugar syrup with fumagilan to treat for nosema. If I feed anything sugar syrup in the fall (light hives) I add fumagilan as well. Cheap, and it could save your bees. NO HONEY SUPERS on when feeding, and allow recommended time after the syrup is gone before replacing honey supers.
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Offline riverbee

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Re: Dysentery or Nosema?
« Reply #3 on: April 11, 2018, 10:19:53 pm »
jen when i looked at the pix, i wasn't certain, i thought maybe spring squirts or some dysentery until i read your description....
(i have seen much worse in my own hives than your pix exhibit.)
"we lifted the lid and found large amounts of fresh yellow squirty poop Everywhere, all the frames, on the walls, and a definite strong odor of poop. "

the strong odor flipped it for me, and description of the face frames and walls.  there are two types of nosema. i do not know if it is nosema jen.

like perry said i would treat with fumigillan b.
the hive can be salvaged. scrape what you can off with a hive tool off the tops of the frames and sides of the boxes. mix up a light solution of bleach/water and wipe the top of the frames, the sides of the box down with it and the face of the frames of capped honey.
it's just what i would do. i wouldn't want my bees trying to clean this up.....
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Offline apisbees

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Re: Dysentery or Nosema?
« Reply #4 on: April 12, 2018, 05:50:51 am »
You didn't show if there was much on the outside of the hive near the entrances? In the hive like that I would think it is Nosema or they got into some bad food. Want a definite answer send in a sample into the bee lab.
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Offline Jen

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Re: Dysentery or Nosema?
« Reply #5 on: April 12, 2018, 12:14:39 pm »
Apis, good observation! All this pooh is on the inside, happening in just one week.

She lives amongst oak trees that produce 'honeydew' which contains ash. Several of us think the bees have been ingesting oak honeydew containing ash. But ash dysentary appears so close to nosema that it is strongly suggested to treat like nosema just to be on the safe side.

Online Article:
"Here in Northern California, especially in late summer and fall when floral sources are far and few between, oak dew becomes an important supplement to the diet of honey bees. Oak trees are fed upon by wasp larvae that form galls, and in fall bees can be seen collecting the honeydew being excreted by the gall
The only issue is that oak dew is not as digestible by bees as flower nectar because of the high amount of ash, minerals, and possibly the presence of tannins, mold spores, or different proportions of sugar molecules. Some beekeepers believe that oak honey causes dysentery and will remove it and feed sugar syrup instead. Others claim that it causes constipation, the opposite problem, and spray a dilute bleach solution on the bees to “clear them out.”
Sometimes the flow of honeydew is so heavy that the bees plug out the brood boxes, leaving no room for the queen to lay. In this case one strategy is to remove frames of honey and replace with foundation. This causes the colony to consume more honey and draw out the wax, which is helpful all around because the queen is provided with a place to lay and nice clean wax is produced quickly."

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Offline rober

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Re: Dysentery or Nosema?
« Reply #6 on: April 16, 2018, 08:05:04 am »
there's a newer med for nosema that's available called nosevit. dadant carries it. it is supposedly all natural. a tech at the usda lab told me that while hives that were treated with nosema showed a marked decrease in nosema spore counts a month later they rebounded & had higher than the original counts.
http://completebee.com/html/nozevit.html
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Offline apisbees

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Re: Dysentery or Nosema?
« Reply #7 on: April 16, 2018, 02:40:57 pm »
Their are the 2 strains One will be cured with the one treatment the other need more than one.
Related:
Medivet the makers of Fumagilin-B  Has announced it is shutting down.

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Offline riverbee

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Re: Dysentery or Nosema?
« Reply #8 on: April 16, 2018, 07:15:12 pm »
what? what now? wondering what the scoop is behind this?
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