Tag Archives: Varroa Mites

Nosema and Varroa Mites Killed My Bees

Diagnosis

I mailed a small plastic container of dead bees to the ARS (USDA Agricultural Research Service) Bee Research Lab in Beltsville, Maryland on January 14 and have been waiting for the results. Our new president slowed things down by telling the ARS they could not communicate directly with the public. That made me so mad that I took part in a demonstration for the first time in my life. Thankfully, some of that nonsense has now been lifted and I received the PCR results in my e mail today.

It turns out my bees were infected with Nosema, which is a fungal disease, to the tune of 61.5 million spores per bee. They also had 5.3 Varroa destructor mites per one hundred bees. Together, they had no chance.

What I don’t know, is why the Apivar Miticide strips I applied on August 22 did not kill the mites. Hive number 2 did not get treated until Sept 29, and I removed the strips in that hive after only 37 days, instead of the 50 they should have remained, but the other 5 hives all had the strips for 53 days. It should have worked.

I have no idea why they got Nosema but there does not seem to be a good treatment for that. I am not sure what I will have to do to disinfect the two dead-out hives stacked on my porch. They are full of honey, which might possibly harbor Nosema.  I was hoping to use them to start new hives with in the spring but do not want to infect the next batch. I can do a heat treatment but am wondering how to prevent melting all the honey and wax together. I have a small greenhouse that may be able to get up to the required 120 degrees F for 24 hours but I will have to monitor it closely as beeswax melts at 144 degrees.

A 50/50 bleach water solution can disinfect empty combs and wooden ware. Maybe I will have to remove the honey from the frames so I can reuse them the combs.

Guess I will be experimenting yet again.

Who needs a science based job when my whole life seems to be an experiment?

 

Please, let the other four hives be healthy. I am doing all I can.

-Wendy lee, writing at Edgewise Woods, Gardens and Critters

 

Bees, Queens, Mites and Beetles -September 2016

My bees are having a hard time these days. There are Small Hive Beetles (SHB) attacking their space.  I installed screened bottom boards onto the bottoms of the hives because they have a slide out tray the larvae drop onto from above. Weekly I collect the cappings and pollen they have destroyed which has fallen into the tray, along with the numerous white, wiggling beetle larvae. It is disgusting and I kill them by scraping  it all into plastic shopping bags and freezing them for a few days. Some I have then sieved out, so only the pollen remains. The rest I feed to the chickens. This does not bode well for my bees.

Pollen and Small Hive Beetle Larva
Pollen and Small Hive Beetle Larva

Beetles

I have twice now, on September 8th and 25th, drenched the ground around the hives with Permithrin insecticide to kill any pupating SHB larvae in the soil. This is supposed to do the trick but I have not seen positive results yet. I still have a lot of larvae showing up on the slide out trap drawers. Supposedly, I should see a drop in populations at three weeks, which is later this week. I am keeping my fingers crossed.

Top Feeders and Supers
Top Feeders and Supers

I installed honey supers on  the first five hives on July 20th but after a month, only the number two hive had drawn out any comb, so  I removed the supers and the syrup feeders from the  other four hives on August 22nd. I had been feeding them 1:1 syrup all this time so they would have the energy to excrete wax and draw new comb out on the foundations. The bees seemed really strong there for awhile and I was hoping I might even get some honey. But no. Plan B was that they would at least get the supers prepped with drawn comb so next year they would not have to work so hard.

Mites

To combat the Varroa Mites, which all beekeepers must assume we have these days, and which is most likely what killed my bees the last two winters, I have hung two Apivar miticide impregnated strips in each deep hive body (except #2 which had the super left on longer). I am seriously hoping that this will kill all the mites and enable me to overwinter my bees this year. The last two years I had only treated with HopGuard, which is considered organic, but it did not work well enough to kill all the mites, so I am using the harder stuff this year. This is what Ed Forney of Geezer Ridge uses and recommends, and since he manages to keep all his bees alive, I am following his advice  this year.

Feeding

I am still feeding pollen patties to all 6 hives, about every week to ten days, to help the bees feed their brood. The Goldenrod  and Autumn Asters are blooming now but, according to Charles, a beekeeper who moves his bees up and down the East coast following crops, the bees around here don’t utilize these plants here so much. He tells me it is an elevational thing and that up in Pennsylvania, at higher latitudes, the bees are all over the Goldenrod. I don’t see very many on the plants here in my yard, but the wasps seem to like it.

Queens

September 18th, while going through the hives and laying the pollen patties between the two hive bodies, I discovered that hive # 3 had no brood and no larvae on their frames. So, no queen. I have no idea what happened to their queen but now I need a new one. A fellow beekeeper showed me a photo of the frames in her Russian queened hive that were absolutely brimming with brood, so I bought my new queen from the same place she had. Charles lives fairly close by and raises queens himself, which means they have not been stressed by shipping at least. I borrowed a frame of capped brood from hive #1 and installed the new Russian queen (another $36)  in hive #3 on September 20th. This is the fourth queen I have had to buy this year, even though all of my hives are new this year. I had one package arrive with a dead queen, and the others have disappeared for unknown reasons.

Queen Cage
Queen Cage

Today, I will order  some more Apivar from Mann Lake, which will cost me $10.40 each double deep hive, since I am ordering a 50 strip package this time. It was about a dollar a strip more when I was buying it in 10 strip packages. Then I can remove the super and treat hive #2 for mites. I will have to treat all six hives again next spring and fall, so I can definitely use the larger amount.

Meanwhile, I attend every workshop and monthly class I am able to and I am also planning on working with another beekeeper close to me  so I can learn as much as possible about keeping bees. So far it is an uphill battle and I admire anyone who does it for fun. I am finding it a little stressful myself, as well as expensive.

-Wendy lee Maddox, writing at Edgewisewoods, Gardens and Critters

Bees 2016

Bees- The Saga

There is so much to learn about keeping bees. Up until recently, I have not known enough to be able to keep mine alive. I have been a very bad bee mamma. I had a hive in the 70’s, which a bear got, and another in the 80’s, which was really mean, but now I am trying again. I did manage to catch a swarm a few years ago when a friend had his bee hive here  but I do not have much experience other than that. Bee keeping is, surprisingly, one of those things that some people get all hyped up about, almost like religion or politics. It is hard to sift through all the conflicting information and make good decisions. I have had bee people get mad at me for not blindly following their methods, but I don’t blindly follow anybody, so they will just have to get over it. I need good reasons for doing things. Reasons that make sense both scientifically and rationally. Some people  blame farmers using neo-nicotinoids or genetically modified crops for killing all the bees,  I think I may have finally found some bee folks whose opinions I can respect and who can give me intelligent, well reasoned answers. Unfortunately, I have already lost two hives, two years in a row.

First Attempt

In Spring 2014 I purchased one package of Italian bees and one of Russian bees and installed them in two hives.  Neither one made it through to the spring.The Russians were stronger than the Italians during the summer and lasted about a month longer, into March, but I did not know enough to keep them going. I was reading books and getting occasional advice from a (militant- “You have to do it my way”) beekeeper in Pennsylvania, but it was not enough.

In the Spring of 2015 I replaced those first bees with one Italian package and one Carniolian nuc. A nuc (nucleus) is a small hive with about 4 frames of brood, pollen and honey. There are bees already working and a queen that they have accepted who is laying  eggs. A nuc is ready to go and I got it from a beekeeper close by who puts them together to sell. All I had to do initially was install them in a full size hive so they could expand. Packages, on the other hand, consist of about 3 pounds of assorted bees collected into a shoe box sized, screened in box with a separate tiny cage holding a queen they have just met. You don’t know how many workers or nurse bees are in a package, nor how old they might be. Bees only live about 45 days so old ones won’t be useful for long. The queen needs to start laying as soon as possible to keep them going but sometimes package bees don’t like the smell of their new queen and they will kill her off. If you open the hive and don’t see any eggs being laid, then you have to get another queen right away.

This package of bees  killed their queen before she was even out of her cage ( they can sting her right through the screen) and they also killed the replacement queen I bought. I was advised to join the two hives in an attempt to get one strong hive out of them. I put a layer of newspaper between the two hives and stacked them together. That seemed to go OK. I applied the HopGuard strips to control the Varroa mites in August but the hive never got very strong. They were dead by December, even though they still had honey stores and it had not gotten cold yet. There was no brood so the queen had either not survived or she up and left. It was depressing. Getting expensive too. Package bees cost about $100 and a nuc is $165, queens another $35.

Second Attempt

Desperate for information, in the winter of 2015,  I joined a local bee chapter and attended their monthly meetings assuming I would get good information. However, they had conflicting opinions about what the proper way to keep bees was and there were even arguments  during the monthly meetings. The last thing I needed was to sit through a meeting where folks got into arguing about who is right. I avoided going after that. They held classes for beginners and advanced beekeepers though and I attended those. I was supposed to get a mentor during the classes but I didn’t because how would I know if the mentor’s ideas were right or if they were just pushing opinions? Instead, I got into a lengthy conversation with one of the guys who had started keeping bees the year before. I decided I would read books, talk to people who kept bees, and see if I could  maybe come across someone who was willing to help me on my own. That did not work out so well because I did not find a mentor and was still not sure what I was looking at when I opened my hives. I could not tell what was normal and what was a problem when I had nothing to compare them with.

One thing I had been told in the classes that seemed to make sense  was that I needed to install screened bottom boards on my hives to help with cooling in summer and prevention of damp in the winter. There was a sliding tray to insert below the screen to catch any mites that fell off the bees to enable counting how many mites there were. So I installed a bottom screen. I still couldn’t tell how many mites there were. I have since learned that screened bottom boards cause the bees too much extra work because they have to bring in  more water as it evaporates too quickly. Then in the winter, they can’t keep the now drafty hive warm enough and will starve rather than break out of their warming cluster to go eat the honey a few frames over.  See what I mean about conflicting information?

By the end of November it was obvious that there was no longer a queen in the hive, no eggs or larvae, just a small group of workers left. There was still honey, which I have saved, and lots of empty comb, so I will use it to help out the bees I get next. I broke down and attended another bee chapter meeting in the hope of meeting someone useful, which I did. Cheryl and Ed Forney, of Geezer Ridge, told me not to give up, they would help me learn about keeping my bees alive. They are a very generous couple who work with Veterans in West Virginia, helping them get started in bees. They would be holding free classes towards the end of winter at their farm and I could come out and go through the hives with them when it warmed up, to learn by doing. Finally.

Third Attempt-Spring 2016

I am bound and determined to successfully raise my own bees. In January I ordered one box of Italian package bees and one Carniolian nuc for delivery in late April from a beekeeper close to me that I had dealt with before. Then, in early March,  I attended more bee classes, this time at Geezer Ridge, a very successful apiary about 45 minutes away. There, I learned about the life cycle of the Varroa mite and why my treatments had not worked to get rid of them. I learned that I would need at least three hives so that I would be able to borrow frames of brood from the stronger hives to help build up the weak ones. So I ordered two more nucs raised at Geezer Ridge, where I knew the bees would be healthy and ready to go, and one more package  to go with the first in case I needed to switch the queens. I also ordered 2 more double deep wooden hive bodies so I will have 5 altogether this year. Three nucs and two packages should ensure I have enough bees to help the weaker ones out. I missed the Facebook announcement for the first class but made the second, third and fourth, which was a field day.

In my first class, I learned that every hive in this area will have mites and there is very little that actually works to kill them off.  Some of the other diseases could be a problem but are not always, so we learned what to look for. I learned that Ed is all about following scientific reasoning and studies and he knows why something needs to be done as well as what. That was refreshing. The bees must have proper nutrition in the form of protein (pollen patties) and carbohydrates (sugar) to keep their immune systems up.  There are many environmental stressors around today that bees did not have to deal with in the past. Breeding queens for resistance to stress and disease is important. Bee colonies will be considerably weakened and lose most of their brood (into which the mites lay their own evil eggs) if the mites are not controlled in the fall and then again in the spring. It is not enough to kill the adult mites hanging on the outside of the bees (the ones that I should have found under the screened bottom board), I have to kill the other life stages as well. Some of the miticides that are sold harm the bees more than the mites and some only kill one life stage of mite.

In the second class Ed showed us how to install package bees and nucs, how to feed them, and how to manipulate the frames so the bees do not have to waste energy. He answered lots of questions from the class of about 50 people without making anyone feel stupid. He advised that we talk with our farmer neighbors and get them to let us know the night before they spray, so we can lock our bees up for a short time.

In the last class, we suited up and went through a bunch of different hives, looking at the eggs and larvae, counting the brood frames in each hive, seeing the pollen they were collecting (Maples), the honey stores they had left. We moved some of the frames around to make it easier for the bees to take care of, placing the honey to the outside, putting drawn empty comb near the brood so the queen could easily lay nearby. Basically centralizing their work for them and taking advantage of their natural inclination to move up. We learned how to feed them for the winter with pollen patties, and fondant, a fluffy icing sort of sugar, and then changing to the warm weather, sugar syrup top feeder. He kept going until we were all feeling comfortable around the bees and done with asking questions.

So this year I am going to follow the advice of these professional beekeepers, who manage to winter over all their colonies, and I will use the systemic miticide that they use. Unfortunately, I have to give up on raising my bees organically or I risk losing them again, which I am not willing to do.  I had  been trying to keep the Varroa mite population down by hanging Hop Guard strips in the hives, rather than using a harsher chemical miticide. The good news is that the hives are not treated when the honey supers are on so the honey for people, when I finally get some, should be fine. I feel much better knowing that I can call on Ed and Cheryl for advice, and I plan on spending time learning in their bee yard whenever I can.

Getting Ready for the Bees-March/April 2016

The two new double-deep (meaning two deep boxes as opposed to shallower mediums), ten frame hives I purchased needed to be painted so my five year old grand daughter and I set them up on boards in the backyard and first applied primer.Then, since I have learned that it is OK to paint them colors and not just boring bright white, we went to the store to get some paint. I picked a light green, so they would not be so glaringly obvious in the pasture. While in New Zealand this winter, I saw hives in all kinds of colors stacked by the sides of the roads. Some people paint them to match their house, some with Amish designs. The bees do not seem to care.

I also bought new top feeders for each of the five hives instead of the frame feeders I had been using. They hold more, are easier to fill and clean, and more bees can reach them at a time. Ed experimented with a hole in the feeder box and came up with the proper size to prevent the bees from building burr comb (wax comb that bees build out to fill any gaps larger than a certain size) between the two halves of the feeder. They like it dark where they build comb. Bees are very particular about the space between their combs. If you don’t space the frames correctly they will bridge them all together and make a mess.

I will be registering my bees so the state inspector can check them out if I need him to. This means that I am now aware of the best management practices for keeping bees in my state. There are limits on liability for beekeepers if they follow certain guidelines.  For instance, if you live on less than 1/2 acre you can have up to 4 colonies , and they need to be facing away from your neighbors or have a hedge or fence that forces them to move up above head height on their flight path. 8 Colonies are allowed on one acre and as long as you can place them no closer than 200 feet from developed land there is no limit. There are also rules about how best to manage your hives. I had no idea.

So now I have to set up more cement blocks and level them so I can put two inch boards across as bee hive shelves. I like the way Ed does it with cement doorway lintels but I will stick to the much lighter weight boards for now. Then I might paint the older white hives with this nice new green if i get the chance. I will set all the hives in place and be ready for when they arrive, which depending on the weather should be somewhere around the third week in April. I will post then with new pictures and the story of installation.

-Wendy lee writing at Edgewise Woods, Gardens and Critters