Worldwide Beekeeping
Beekeeping => Pests and Diseases => Topic started by: LindsayBrower1 on February 11, 2015, 05:04:47 pm
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Today was relatively warm so I decided to go out and check if my hives needed any feed. When I opened my hives I was shocked.. They smelled of vinegar and have been relieving themselves inside of the hives... All 4 that are here at my house. When I took the lid off the bees started flying, instantly pooping all over me as they flew above. There have been days where I would have thought the bees would attempt a cleansing flight and didn't.. They are in sun most of the day too. When I got inside I was alarmed by what I smelled. The bee poop on my jacket and pants smelled like dead rotten fish. 1 of 4 hives is dead and I'm worried about the rest,... :'(
(https://worldwidebeekeeping.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fs10.postimg.cc%2Fdcbx0zocl%2Fimage.jpg&hash=3a1964c10fc84c352516da565fb3bc8841b4c554) (http://postimg.cc/image/dcbx0zocl/)
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The picture is of the dead hive
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Ooooh Lindsay, that is a bummer! Let's see what the experts say
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Nosema Apis is my first guess.
Any chance of pulling a few frames and taking some pics?
Did you feed any fumagillin in the fall?
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It hurts me to say this,but from what i see i have to agree with the Bug Detective. :o Jack
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It hurts me to say this,but from what i see i have to agree with the Bug Detective. :o Jack
Now that wasn't so bad, was it it Jack? :laugh:
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like jack said lindsay, what perry "the bug detective" said.........
i have seen a great deal worse than this. if you have remaining hives, and are concerned as soon as you can get some fumagillin on them.
like perry, would like to see some pix of the frames themselves.
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Ok I'm going to look up and look into the fumagillin. I'll have to get some pictures of the frames tomorrow. Is there anything I could have done to prevent this? I'm feeling like a fail :sad:
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don't feel like a 'fail' lindsay. we have all experienced the 'wrath' of the nosemas.........
prevent it?
feeding them in the fall with a dose of fumagillan added to sugar syrup, and even one dose going into spring.
i usually feed a dose in the fall months.
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You do the best you can for them, and then you cross your fingers Lindsay.. I FED Fumagillin B last fall, and I have already lost a couple hives to Nosema.. The sugar cake on the top bars was covered, yellow and brown, and yes, it smelled much like you mention.
How warm is it there? Warm enough to mix 1/1 with Fumagilin and then spray it on the bees?
I am keeping an eye on my bees now. its too cold here to do any spraying or wetting, or even feed a liquid, so the next attempt is going to be mixing the fumagilin with hot water, and using that to make Sugar cakes.. i dont know if it will work, but it is SOMETHING to do to TRY to help when its too cold to do anything else.......
Keeping my fingers crossed for you!
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Thanks Riverbee I'm certainly going to check it out ASAP.
I'm just upset at the thought of having nothing coming into spring... I actually can't even wrap my mind around how I'd feel if that were the case. I went to great lengths and efforts to catch a lot of bees last season. Whatever they have could have steamed from my southern jester nucs I bought to start with in April. Those were my first two hives. They started giving me red flags when the cold came around. They had the most dead bees just piled at the entrances and were the first to mess all over the front of the hive.
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Lazybkpr today was about 38 but tomorrow begins below average temps with wind chills 15-30 below. You can relate to the smell? The vinegar or the dead fish? My gosh the fish smell on my clothes was so strong my 2 year old gave me the "look" when I came through the front door...
Thank you for the well wishes, they go a long way.
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lindsay, we learn as we go. it's just the way it is. don't be hard on yourself, so now you move forward with the knowledge you have, but doesn't mean if you do all the right things it doesn't happen again.
it's hard keeping bees, work hard, think we give them the best to go into winter months, and they die for one reason or another and come spring we are very disheartened at our losses. hang in there, it's the way it is sometimes. just know all of us have experienced this and feel or felt the same as you. i still do. it's never easy.
as scott said, well wishes to you and your bees. never know, they might surprise you and do alright.
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OK, so your a little further north than I am, I think I knew that, just needed reminded. I live in the SE corner of Iowa just very slightly north of the 41st parallel.
I checked on a hive I was certain was doomed with Nosema about a month ago.. a couple days ago I flipped the top off to clean the hive out, and got a face full of angry bees... I really wasnt expecting that, so keep your fingers crossed.. Also, Give Rob a call. Does he do any queens? Getting a local queen in your hives would give them a bonus to survivability.
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Yes I contacted him earlier but figured I'd post here as well while I waited to hear back from him. We did a brief round of rearing last season together and had plans to really get into it this year... I should have requeened all of my hives but figured I'd let it play out and see where things went... I completely agree about acclimated queens, we just didn't do enough queens to the point where I would have replaced all 9 hives I had at the time.
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I'm kicking myself for not at least making an effort to requeened the jester nucs... They were doing so well I figured I'd chance it. Rob always did say " "even bad queen can perform like good queens when conditions are ideal, it is when the weather turns that bad queens fail"
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"I'm kicking myself for not at least making an effort to requeened the jester nucs... They were doing so well I figured I'd chance it. Rob always did say " a good queen is a good queen when the conditions are favorable..."
why are you kicking yourself lindsay, rob's right, why requeen if there is a good queen and things are going well?
also, acclimated queens are not going to guarantee an absence of nosema. just my HO....
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Listen to the comments above Lindsay. Sometimes you can do everything right and still have it all go left. If this thing we do was easy, everyone would be doing it.
Those that stick with it have a common denominator and that is persistence.
All is not yet lost.
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Antibiotics! :sad:
IMO
The whole idea behind survivor bees is that the ones without the appropriate genetics do NOT survive.
I can understand using fumagillin, to prop up a colony, to have bees to requeen.
I don't understand the wholesale use of antibiotics as preventative maintenance.
done ranting now ;D
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Hey Scott, will mixing fumagillin in hot water kill it's action? i know your supposed to keep ot out of the sun light when feeding? I don't know, just wondering ???. Jack
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I believe you are right Jack, when adding fumagillin to syrup you have to wait until it is lukewarm.
This agreeing thing has to stop Jack! ;D
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Getting the bees to consume the treatment is going to be your problem this time of year.
Most use some sort of drench, the bees clean each other ingesting the treated syrup.
Sick bees normally don't eat a whole lot, that's the reason you dump it on them.
It is to cold to dump wet liquid on the cluster for you.
I don't know the success rate for treating after the fact, but I assume that it's very low.
I would just let nature take it's course and see if some make it through.
Plan on replacing those frames and cleaning up the hive components.
We used to treat every fall, still had some infections through the winter months every year.
It wasn't until we stopped using nosema treatments that it went away for us.
I could always pick out the frames that had fumagilin-B stored in them.
They were the ones that were hardly used during winter.
We ended up cycling those frames out of our operation.
I really don't know if our local genetics finally kicked in, or adding winter feed made the difference.
Our candy bricks have a shot of vinegar and Honey B Healthy added to the mix.
This is the time of year that you start to see sick bees up here.
It's a smell you never forget.
Sometimes they are able to get past it. Good luck!
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After reading Tef's comment, I wondered if the bees would take fumigil in a sugar cake?
Lindsay... was this your only hive?
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Original post "All 4 that are here at my house"
Reply #15 "I completely agree about acclimated queens, we just didn't do enough queens to the point where I would have replaced all 9 hives I had at the time. "
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Sunlight kills the Fumagilin, and excessive heat will as well, warm water from your faucet should not harm it.
I suppose if your tap water is 240 degrees F it might be an issue.. :-\ Not sure what the breaking point is, Guess I better be finding out!
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I'm going to try to feed them the medication in fondont.. But that's just it, how sick are they? Will they even eat? I can only try at this point. Here's a hive front that has looked this ugly since it got cold out...I'm going to collect bees and have them checked out under the microscope to check for nosema
(https://worldwidebeekeeping.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fs16.postimg.cc%2Fe3jj6ly69%2Fimage.jpg&hash=6882e7165b68f35f9aecc3901556ac174b4d7926) (http://postimg.cc/image/e3jj6ly69/)
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A good read all of you may be interested in. Rob sent it to me. http://scientificbeekeeping.com/sick-bees-part-13-simple-microscopy-of-nosema/
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Without a confirmed Nosema test, we are just assuming that they are infected.
Could just be a really bad case of bee Dysentery.
When bees reach over 30 to 40% of the body weight in fecal matter, it has an explosive effect.
Ingesting solids from dark fall honey helps them get there sooner.
Feeding on fermented honey is also thought to bring it on.
http://www.honeybeesuite.com/tag/dysentery/
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Thank you tefer2. Taking a bunch of bees to be looked at under the microscope tomorrow to see whether they have the nosema or not
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Correction, Rob always did say "even bad queens can perform like good queens when conditions are ideal, it is when the weather turns that bad queens fail"
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Don't feel like the lone stranger Lindsay, I've been observing this hive of mine for the last week, seems something is going on inside here. And I did treat with fumigilin last Fall. Starting tomorrow the weather is supposed to be in the low 60's for a few days, haven't hit 65 yet this winter, so I'm pacing :\
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Don't feel like the lone stranger Lindsay, I've been observing this hive of mine for the last week, seems something is going on inside here. And I did treat with fumigilin last Fall. Starting tomorrow the weather is supposed to be in the low 60's for a few days, haven't hit 65 yet this winter, so I'm pacing :\
OH CRY ME A RIVER!
:laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
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In the low 50's F here today ;D, but going down to in the single digits by Wed. with possible snow from Canada :o. Thanks Alot Perry. >:( Jack
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In the low 50's F here today ;D, but going down to in the single digits by Wed. with possible snow from Canada :o. Thanks Alot Perry. >:( Jack
Anytime Jack, at least for next 3 or 4 months if you want! ;D
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Update*
After taking my bees and having them looked at under a microscope they told me my bees do not have nosema... They were particularly shocked and said my nosema spore count was the lowest they've seen... less than a normal "healthy" sample. He even took another slide of my sample and still confirmed the count was extremely low... he let me get in and showed me what the spores look like under the microscope, it was neat and I learned a bunch :yes:
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Google up honeybee Dysentery, and start reading. It can still kill off a hive.
The intense smell of it, disrupts communication between the bees.
Aren't you glad you didn't treat them with Fumagilin-B before confirming Nosema.
Off to work for me this morning. Let us know what plan you come up with Lindsay.
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Here's what I have in mind.... I put a space heater in my shed and I may move the hives into there to keep the warm enough to just give them syrup to flush out there gut. I'm going to prop the hives up on a table near the window and run pipes out the window from the entrances and stuff the cracked window with an old blanket. I don't know if this is a good or bad idea but I'm not giving up.
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IMO, NOT a good idea.
Disturbing the cluster ( Jiggling the hive), when it's really cold out, COULD kill them.
The wind break, inside a building might work. The problem there is IF the bees get dis-oriented and try to enter the wrong hive you'll have a war.
Heat COULD cause them to break cluster and get stranded, due to a mechanical failure.
I would try to increase ventilation in the hive, drying it out some and pray for better weather.
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I'm with Ray, I would be concerned as well that some bees will come out and go to their original spot, remember, it's the only one they know.