Author Topic: Dead out  (Read 1929 times)

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Offline Mikey N.C.

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Dead out
« on: February 02, 2019, 06:12:42 pm »
Box set up was 2 ten deeps with a med. super full capped. Bee's were flying good 3 weeks ago bringing in pollen. Removed med . super with shim and sugar cakes.  Out side frame had a odd looking spot.

They were clustered in bottom ten in center.  Lots of wax dropings in bottom.


poem with 2 stanzas and 4 lines


Very spotty broad pattern


Offline Mikey N.C.

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Re: Dead out
« Reply #1 on: February 02, 2019, 06:21:49 pm »
Have no idea how poem thing got there

Offline Mikey N.C.

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Re: Dead out
« Reply #2 on: February 02, 2019, 06:33:34 pm »
Didn't find Q. Clutter on floor was wax and bee tails like they had been eaten.
In 2nd ten frames on out side had like sugar syrup very watered just dripping out . one side of box looked odd


Offline Mikey N.C.

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Re: Dead out
« Reply #3 on: February 02, 2019, 06:38:26 pm »
Please any info would be helpful.
This was box i thought might have k-wing.


Offline tecumseh

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Re: Dead out
« Reply #4 on: February 03, 2019, 06:12:55 am »
first... tell us how they looked 3 months ago?  Did you take off honey late?  Did you feed or do varroa treatment? < just give us a historical account of the hive condition.

Causal observation... first picture looks like water damage over what was at one time pollen.  Cluster looks way too small for 2 boxes.  Wax cappings on bottom typically suggest a bit of robbing. Casually they looked like they failed to build population in the later part of last year and simply perished. Perhaps watery stuff dripping out was in fact water?
 
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Offline Mikey N.C.

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Re: Dead out
« Reply #5 on: February 03, 2019, 09:23:08 am »
Was a nuc , purchased in April.  Feed syrup water with miller feeder all yr. When bees filled bottom 10 added another 10 deep with drawn comb . Q was laying 3 full frames in bottom and 2 full frames in top.  They were capping honey in top box.
Didn't thank it was enough for overwintering so added med. super on top of fully capped frames,shim and sugar cakes in October. Didn't treat bees. We had one of the wettest yrs in history with one hurricane. I did notice in December when temperature got up in the mid 60's there was alot of activity like orientation or cleansing . Could have been robbing from really strong feral hive next to it.

Offline Jacobs

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Re: Dead out
« Reply #6 on: February 05, 2019, 08:48:57 am »
I don't know if yours fits this pattern, but this is what I am seeing in my dead outs and in other folks dead outs I have looked at.  Last season, many of us got sugar roll counts for varroa that were very low--below threshold for treatments.  Hives that appeared to be strong or at least reasonably strong going into winter dwindled to the point that fairly recently, as queens started laying, there were not enough bees to cover the brood and reach food nearby.  I paid attention to the small clusters and saw that honey cells in the next frames within 2-3 inches of the cluster were empty while there was honey toward the ends of the frames.  The bees would not leave the brood to go that 2-3 inches and starved in place.

My dead outs were on solid bottom boards and I could not get a good mite count.  The insert of a hive I looked at 2 days ago had at least 100 mites in a 2-3 frame area based on debris drop.  This had been a strong hive going into winter with below threshold mite counts.  This mite count matches what some beekeepers with live bees doing winter OAV have been getting on their inserts.  I don't know if this count is unusual, but it scares me--especially with so many mites available to attack new brood.  I don't know if the mite numbers clustering with bees come from untreated "mite bomb" hives or are normal numbers.  I am also wondering if mites are now carrying some more virulent viruses than before.  A little over a year ago, one of our NC inspectors said he was seeing less DWV and wondered if what varroa were carrying had changed some.

I have gone into hives in the last couple of warm days here and made sure that I placed capped honey right beside the cluster.  For my hives that make it, I am planning on much more aggressive mite monitoring.  If folks have been doing winter OAV treatments with screened bottom boards and inserts, I would like to hear more about mite drops they are seeing so we can try and get some idea of what may be a "normal" winter mite count.

I hope I have not hijacked this post and gotten too far from what Mikey N.C. looking for.

Offline Lburou

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Re: Dead out
« Reply #7 on: February 05, 2019, 02:21:58 pm »
Mikey,   I'm sorry to hear about these bees.  Diagnosing bees over the internet is getting more difficult lately because my crystal ball has grown cloudy.  ;)

I do recommend two articles on diagnosing dead outs.  They are Here and here.  Hope there is something in there that will help this time or the next. 

Quote from: Tec
...Causal observation... Cluster looks way too small... Wax cappings on bottom typically suggest a bit of robbing. Casually they looked like they failed to build population in the later part of last year and simply perished...

Your pictures do not show very many bees.  Unless there are more bees than shown, they could not survive cold weather.  There are many, many variables that contribute to a dead out, sometimes it comes down to your best guess.  HTH  :)

FWIW, I treat new hives for mites before bringing them into my yard.  If I don't treat in advance of moving them, I'll segregate them and then treat soonest.
Lee_Burough

Offline Mikey N.C.

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Re: Dead out
« Reply #8 on: February 07, 2019, 06:23:55 pm »
Do you think that hives. Need to be treated.?

Offline Mikey N.C.

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Re: Dead out
« Reply #9 on: February 07, 2019, 06:30:58 pm »
Do you think that your introducing mites from other colony's

Offline Bakersdozen

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Re: Dead out
« Reply #10 on: February 07, 2019, 06:53:31 pm »
Without quarantining you could be unintentionally bringing mites, foulbrood, etc.
Swarms are another way of spreading mites around.  You could do an OA treatment on a swarm, I think, if you treated with in the the first 7-8 days of putting them in a hive with drawn comb. 

Offline tecumseh

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Re: Dead out
« Reply #11 on: February 08, 2019, 06:05:53 am »
and of course robbing is a great way to spread mites.... as far as we know already weak hives (or hives with existing high mite counts) also tend to attract more mites....

Do not know the source of your nuc?

At this time I would think that late in the season the hive failed to build population and where in too large a box to make the winter. < this factor is often overlooked but you can get a bit ambitious in the fall of the year, add too much space and by January have few if any bees in the box.

Varroa treatment should be done sooner and not later and in some situation feeding (pollen and syrup) should be started at about the same time... ie late summer or early fall.

Offline tecumseh

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Re: Dead out
« Reply #12 on: February 08, 2019, 06:24:51 am »
I should probable add that the evidence is a bit thin concerning 'mite bombs'.  This is not to say that some mites from a dying hive do not go somewhere but the evidence suggest the number of mites making the transition is small relative to their original numbers in original hive.  I think the term itself is good evidence we need to be careful of picking up on terms, repeating them again and again, and then think for some reason they are true or fact based.

I SUSPECT (ie don't really know) that in very high destiny situations (like commercial consolidation yards) that there could reasonable be more of a problem than in most casual (hobby or sideliner) apiary.

Offline Mikey N.C.

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Re: Dead out
« Reply #13 on: February 08, 2019, 09:42:04 pm »
If i have 1 hive that's not treated and lives yr. after yr.  And new bees i buy they die .what I'm i doing wrong

Offline troutdog

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Re: Dead out
« Reply #14 on: February 13, 2019, 02:09:11 pm »
Make more bees from the one that lives.

Looks like parasitic mite syndrome or efb in brood pic

K wing is all but gone
Deformed wing now has a v2

Where you get your bees from,?
Ask that person how his bees survived.

Bad queen rearing is always an issue. Could just be badly mated and ran out of gas.
Any pollen in hive?
a fast crash like that can mean all winter bees died at once due to small fat bodies and once broid commenced they sacrificed their fluids to make royal jelly.

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Offline tecumseh

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Re: Dead out
« Reply #15 on: February 14, 2019, 04:59:03 am »
a Mickey snip...
If i have 1 hive that's not treated and lives yr. after yr.  And new bees i buy they die .what I'm i doing wrong

my response>
A lot about keeping bees is not only local but seasonal and the kind of bees you keep.  Do the right thing in the right season with the right kind of bees and you have success even if you do little.  Pull one of these variable and keeping bees become much more difficult.  It has come to my attention that here the sources (quality of) pollen is question here in the fall of the year.  In years where it is 'wettish' this is a small problem since they have lots of store pollen from the spring that is large in quantity and quality. In years where it become very hot and very dry the good pollen is consumed by summer's end and then they only have late summer poor quality pollen to make fall population and a group of young bees to make the winter < this is what some might call 'skinny bees' meaning they have little in the way of fat reserves and consequently little capacity to heat the hive during the colder months.

Cadaver examination...

Fat bees or skinny bees can somewhat be determine by looking at the dead bees.  Skinny bees in particular (especially when dead) will look very small and shriveled up.

Varroa... you can pick thru the litter on the bottom board and see just how many varroa died when the bees died.  As suggest by me by someone else (yankee beekeeper)... if a mite bomb does exist this kind of hive, dying at this time of the year is not one that distributes many mites to other hives.... most if not all of the mites in the hive will be there with the bees and many will still be on the bottom board..

Lastly... the honeybee imho is a pretty robust species and quite often it is not one or the other (false choice) but a combination of things that has lead to the demise of that particular hive.  < as an example varroa means a hive is less thrifty and does not collect as much pollen or honey, during the fall it runs out of food resources.. was the cause lack of food or varroa?
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