I've Kilt My Bees.

[jdmidwest]

I officially called this one dead today.  Have not been around them since Thanksgiving weekend on a warm day.  Went down this afternoon and checked them, nothing moving around the opening.  Opened it up and found many dead bees, no live ones.  I guess the cold was too much for the weak condition they were in going in to winter.

I am down to 3 on the farm.  They were working and flying on Christmas during that warm spell.  Still have my doubts about the condition of one of those, will probably only have 2 at the end of winter there.  Skunks were working the hives this fall, there was signs of them around each of them deer season.  Digging in the dirt, claw marks on front entrance.  They pester the bees till they come out to defend the hive, then eat the little sweet morsels.  Stings do not bother skunks much for some reason.

[jdmidwest]

This was the culprit.  African small hive beetle in a homemade trap.  That is a dry swiffer pad I put in the hive when I closed it down this fall.  I pulled it out yesterday. when I took a closer look at the hive.  Beetles get trapped in the fiber and die.  As you can see, there were plenty of them.  There are more on that fuzz than I had saw in any of my hives till this fall.

I am guessing that that warm spell around Christmas got the beetles active and they laid eggs in the honey portion of the hive.  They hatched and slimed the hive again, running the bees away from the inside of the hive.  That would explain the large amount of dead bees on top of the hive in the box holding the feeder.  They either froze or starved.  Time to burn another mess when weather clears up, then spray ground real good again to kill the beetle larva.

[snagged in outlet 3]

Man that sucks.

[jdmidwest]

I hope I can kill the larva in the ground before the new bees arrive this spring.  Those suckers are vicious.

[MOFishwater]

dang, that's crazy. Not sure about burning all the equipment though, frames are prob worthless but the deeps could be frozen to kill off beetles and resued!? I know that's the standard for foulbrood and nosema. 
 

Do you put any buffer between hive stand and soil? Doesnt look like it from the pictures. A simple fix we've taken is to put a few layers of roofing shingles under the hives to keep weeds down and block the soil (where the beetles come from). Have you tried permethrin or diamataceous earth around hive location? Screened bottom boards on your hives would be a very easy step and is seemingly the standard from what i can tell these days. 

I've had a few beetle issues but always seem to 'outrun' them with keeping the hives strong, havent ever deployed any traps. 

I run around 10 hives usually, only lost my first couple hives last year after 8 years of beekeeping, which is well above the norm of 30% loss annually from most studies. I did lose one a couple weeks ago that I had reduced to a single deep. I think they got active in the warm spurt right before the ice storm hit. They were semi-clustered up but dead, frozen in time, I think they just got too cold. 

I let my strong hives roll longer than most suggest, but i love goldenrod honey and so do my honey buyers so i think the gamble is usually worth it. We get massive goldenrod blooms around our property and it's usually enough to get most of the top deep lined wall to wall with capped stores. The one thing I do is supplement with heavy 2:1 until they refuse to take it (usually when temps dip consistently in the fall). After that I add hard candy and keep an eye on that until spring when syrup gets put back on. Feed feed feed! It's expensive after a while but it's not as expensive as buying another nuc or knocking back the strongest hives by splitting them and hampering honey production for the season. There's no harm in giving them too much food but with the crazy weather changes and rollercoaster temps the bees are much more active than years ago when they were barely doing anything all winter long. Starvation is a real problem and this year will be no different. I've been keeping a close eye on activity in the hives in the backyard to have an idea what's happening in the big bee yard at the farm. They've been quite active, even this week they're really coming and going. With the daylight increasing every day the queen will be ramping up egg laying, make sure they have more than they can eat! 

[jdmidwest]

The frames had been slimed and filled with maggots, aka SHB larva.  They were so nasty, the bees moved out of the hive and stayed there.  I burned them, not worth the time and money to clean them up.

I sprayed the ground with permethrin but did not have any barriers in place.  The wet late summer we had was a breeding ground for the beetle larva.  Normally the ground under the hive dries out and is hard during that time of year.  Beetle larva do not survive when they hit the ground.

Other beekeepers in the area had a bad year with them, none as bad as me.  It seems like shade was a factor, my yard has shade 1/2 the day.  Full sun seems to keep beetles down too.

[Al Agnew]

Very interesting article in the latest "Discover" magazine about the problems bees are having and the causes.  About 10 years ago, bees around the world just started disappearing, not even dead bodies--colony collapse disorder.  Now bees no longer just disappear, they die at much faster than normal rates from disease (deformed wing virus) and pathogens.  Queens often don't survive more than a third as long as they used to.  Plus now the bees are again beginning to just disappear--healthy queen, healthy brood, good stores of nectar and pollen, and almost no workers.  Like 10% of the worker population in one hive compared to a week earlier.  And bees are also just weakening, no vigor.  It's like they don't have the energy to go out and get nectar.

Basically, the reasons for the declines are lack of habitat, the Varroa destructor--a parasitic mite, viruses and pathogens, and agricultural chemicals, including pesticides, fungicides, and insect growth regulators.  Studies seem to show that the agricultural chemicals, especially neonicotinoid pesticides, aren't killing bees outright but are weakening them and their immune system, leaving them more susceptible to the other factors.  But there are allegations that the studies from the EPA and USDA are being suppressed by the politicians because of the lobbying efforts of the chemical companies.

There were record losses across the country last winter...in Missouri, between 40 and 50% of all hives were lost.

[jdmidwest]

All this is true. Bees carry chemicals back into hives and they build up in wax. I have been treatment free and don't use chemicals in hives. I have tried to keep down pests by management and non chemical things like that swiffer pad. 

I am bringing in new genetics this spring that are mite resistant. I am spraying they ground around hives to kill beetles before new ones arrive.