# Killing off my hives slowly



## Loadman1221 (Jul 22, 2016)

Kinda hard to tell in the pictures but I have some larvae that are during and turning brown in the cells I also have some larvae that are not not circular in the cell that are kinda straight...(if that makes sense)


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

I'm very sorry to say it, but you are describing the classic symptoms of European Foul Brood, and to some degree also to Parasitic Mite Syndrome.

Let's start with PMS. What are your recent mites counts like? And what's the treatment history on this colony? If your mites are out of control, and have been for a while, then it's more likely to be PMS. OTOH, if you've had low counts and have been treating effectively for the last 9 months or so (all the way back to last fall, if you had the bees at that time) then the chances that it's PMS are much lower. 

Which sounds like good news, but it's not. Because that leaves EFB, which is a more serious problem, and also one that's contagious among your other hives.

EFB is bacterial disease which affects larvae and kills them mostly while they are still in the larval stage. So you'll see eggs, often a good egg pattern, but then instead of the larvae maturing into fat, glistening, white grubs, the middle-aged larvae start to turn a dull color, often yellowish and eventually gray. They uncoil from lying against the outer edge of the cell and look twisted and elongated. A few larvae will be infected a bit later in their development and then die under the cappings, giving rise to some capped brood with holes in the cappings. But most often they die before being capped so what you see is eggs, discolored larvae (and less than you'd expect, because the nurse bees haul them out of the hive when the die) and then a very small quantity of capped, and scattered brood that is really out of proportion to the amount of eggs being laid.

Obviously a hive that cannot raise enough workers to replcae the losses will eventually fail.

EFB is a different disease than American Foul Brood, which is the one where the hives are commonly burnt in order to contain the infection and get rid of the equipment which is extremely difficult to clean up unless you have it irradiated.

AFB, in contrast to EFB, usually presents with lots of capped brood, but many if not most of the cells have holes in them because though the pupae were infected as larvae (at about the same age as in EFB) the disease takes longer to kill the poor creatures. Long enough for them to survive and get capped. While they are both disease that are contracted at the same age, EFB mostly kills during the larval stage, while AFB kill during the pupal stage. In AFB , the dead pupae will be ropy and stretch out a long way if you stick a match in the cell and remove it. You are not describing the symptoms of AFB, however.

What you're describing is a disease that's killing the larvae, not the pupae. So that is better news, if you have to have one of the FB diseases.

To confirm the presence of EFB you can buy a field test kit for from most bee suppliers. These one-use kits cost about $13/ea and I'd get at least two in case you mess up on the first test. They are not hard to perform, and the instructions are clear. You will get results in just a minute, or two.

You can also send the affected frame to the USDA Beltsville lab and they will test it and send you the results. This may take a couple of weeks if they are busy. It is a free service. You will not get the frame back.

IMO, the test kits are the way to go, because the sooner you know what's going on, the sooner you can begin to deal with it. And it poses a constant active risk to your other hives because it is a contagious disease. It can be moved from one hive to another by moving frames, bees, brood, queens, and equipment from one hive to another. It can also be spread by drifting and robbing. And beekeepers can spread if they use the same tools and gloves on more than one hive.

The "cure" for EFB is to treat the hive with a series of antibiotic applications. This is an easy thing to do. Unfortunately you can longer just buy the antibiotic. You will need a vet's prescription to order it. That's the toughest part. 

If you get the antibiotic, it will likely arrest the disease in the nurse bees alive in the hive now (nurse bees while not infected themselves, pass the bacteria on to the larvae they are feeding), but it will not remove the bacterial contamination from the combs and woodenware. And it is common to have some re-infection due the remaining bacteria, even for a couple of seasons afterward.

A solution to that is to do a shook swarm of the bees onto completely new equipment (new boxes, bare foundation etc.) abandoning any frames of stores and honey in the sick hive. Some people even go so far as to do a double shook swarm (two shook swarms in a row, with a short interval between them). The "dirty" equipment can be cleaned up, but it is not an easy or simple job. Obviously EFB can be an expensive problem to deal with.

But first things, first:

1) Immediately begin a program to prevent cross-contamination among any of your colonies, not just the sick one(s).

2) Install robber screens to prevent bees from transferring it among your hives.

3) Study pictures of EFB online and then re-examine your colony to see if that's what you see.

4) Order test kits, and test.

5) If you have an active bee-inspection system in your state, call and ask for an inspection. The inspector will be able to confirm your observations and likely will also be helpful to you in trying to get a prescription, if needed.

6) Get the new equipment needed, and treat and do a shook swarm as recommended by the bee inspector and the vet.

If treated, it's quite likely your colony will survive, and with constant vigilance about cross-contamination you may keep it from spreading to your other colonies. It will challenge and confound your "normal" beekeeping operations though, to not be able to move stuff around between hives, but that's the most common way it is spread, so you'll just have to figure other workarounds for the near future. 

Please don't just ignore it, though, or shake your bees out elsewhere, or move them from the yard they are in now. That would simply pass the problem on to other bees and beekeepers. 

If you have a positive EFB test, I can offer you more information about how to treat, do shook swarms, manage the colony post-treatment, prevent cross contamination, quarantine and clean up gear, try to prevent a re-occurrence, etc.

It is all do-able, if a also a huge PITA.

I'm hoping that you need none of that, but if you do, I'll be glad to share what I have learned

Nancy


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## Loadman1221 (Jul 22, 2016)

enjambres said:


> I'm very sorry to say it, but you are describing the classic symptoms of European Foul Brood, and to some degree also to Parasitic Mite Syndrome.
> 
> Let's start with PMS. What are your recent mites counts like? And what's the treatment history on this colony? If your mites are out of control, and have been for a while, then it's more likely to be PMS. OTOH, if you've had low counts and have been treating effectively for the last 9 months or so (all the way back to last fall, if you had the bees at that time) then the chances that it's PMS are much lower.
> 
> ...


WOW!! Thank you for your response! I will order a test kit tomorrow morning. I hope that’s not what I have but I will look more in to it, thanks again for all the info.


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## Billboard (Dec 28, 2014)

What if the bees came from a package this year? Was the package infected before the buyer got his bees? Or did the EFB come from his equipment? Whats the most likely cause and how did it happen?


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Nancy asked about varroa as well. Parasitic mite syndrome (PMS) will produce the same symptoms. In my hives PMS will absolutely appear if there is no form of mite management. I haven't seen a case of EFB in a number of years.
The point is that PMS is very common and EFB less so. 
Your photos look like my PMS. 
What have you done in the form of mite management?


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## Loadman1221 (Jul 22, 2016)

beemandan said:


> Nancy asked about varroa as well. Parasitic mite syndrome (PMS) will produce the same symptoms. In my hives PMS will absolutely appear if there is no form of mite management. I haven't seen a case of EFB in a number of years.
> The point is that PMS is very common and EFB less so.
> Your photos look like my PMS.
> What have you done in the form of mite management?



Well that makes me feel better about how uncommon EFB is. To me it’s sounding more like PMS because of the issues I’m having. I will try to take a look in the hives again today to get a few better pictures. I have not treated my hives yet this year because they came from 2 packages that I ended up splitting in to 5 hives. If it is PMS what do I do to treat it? Is it like regular mites?


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

PMS is the same as varroa mites. It's the outcome of not controlling varroa sufficiently in order to prevent a catastrophic cascade of damage.

That's why I asked, first, about the mite status and treatment history of these colonies. Because PMS is much more common than EFB, particularly in colonies that have little or no attention to mite control and no history of mite monitoring. 

(Not that mite monitoring prevents PMS, it doesn't. It just allows you to more easily rule in, or out, the possibility of PMS. Colonies where the mite status has been documented to be below thresholds in the recent to mid-term past are extremely unlikely to be suffering from PMS which is the consequence of uncontrolled and sustained mite infestation.)

Since these are now revealed to be 2018 packages, the mid-term past history of mite levels is probably unknown. But if they have been in OPs care long enough to have allowed splitting then the possibility of knowing the mite status is certainly there.

If the colonies were hived on used equipment, then that swings the likelihood back around to EFB. If on new equipment, then the likelihood of EFB is much reduced.

However, EFB is also considered a stress-induced disease. And the stress created by taking two 2018 packages and splitting them into five colonies in just a few months shouldn't be underestimated. 

Along with the possibility that in doing so one unit with some EFB bacteria has been divided and subdivided enough, with the necessary transfer of combs and resources to do do this amount of splitting. So that now they are all infected. That's the principal contamination pathway among managed colonies: the standard beekeeping practices of moving frames around among colonies within a yard when splitting, balancing resources, etc. It's not a bad beekeeping practice - but it can only be done with safety if the operator knows the signs and symptoms of all the possible problems well enough to recognize them before moving frames. 

That's a lot to expect from a person who may be a very new beekeeper. And the risks are rarely ever mentioned when discussing splitting and new beekeepers are often blithely encouraged to make early splits.

*Questions and actions to take now to sort this out:
*
What was the origin of the packages, and what kind of equipment were they hived on (new or used)?

What was done about mite monitoring? 

What's their mite level now? (With the caveat that in EFB infections mite levels are sometimes very low since the lack of success at getting bee brood capped also interferes with the mites' reproductive success. So low mite levels at this point in the infection may actually be a consequence of EFB. )

Immediately put in place strict cross-contamination prevention strategies. PMS is not considered a contagious condition, but EFB most certainly is. And not just for the bees in your yard- it can be spread to other nearby managed and feral colonies if left unchecked.

Since these are now weakened, and already small colonies because of the heavy splitting, and perhaps are being fed as well, it is imperative that you take steps to prevent them from being robbed. Because the robbers could take EFB bacteria home with them, spreading the infection to additional colonies. Even if it's _just_ PMS, robbers will be taking home mites and possibly viruses. Please do the right thing and install effective robbing screens as soon as you can.

If you have a state bee inspector system, now's the time to ask for help.

Closely examine the larvae and test them with the field test kits. I have seen references to false negatives, but not false positives. Or package up an affected frame and send it to the Beltsville Lab.

I believe that the change (Jan. 2017) in the over the counter availability of Oxytet will make EFB much more commonly seen than in the recent past. 

I am still hoping that this is simply PMS, though that's nothing to wish for. But these colonies sound like they are in considerable danger so all the possibilities need to be considered. EFB after early summer is particularly difficult to recover from, so it's important to sort this out soon, one way or another.

Nancy


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## Loadman1221 (Jul 22, 2016)

Oh another thing that I forgot to mention was there where bees out side the hive dead and some crawling around on the ground. In that hive there are a lot of lite colored/ smaller bees... that look like they haven’t fully developed. Now as far as that EFB goes will it cause these bees to be under developed? Or is that from the mites.


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## AHudd (Mar 5, 2015)

Have you seen bees with deformed wings? Google Deformed Wing Virus and K-Wing for pictures.

Alex


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## Loadman1221 (Jul 22, 2016)

AHudd said:


> Have you seen bees with deformed wings? Google Deformed Wing Virus and K-Wing for pictures.
> 
> Alex



No on the k-wings but there are some really lite colored bees almost like an off white.


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

Those may be bees prematurely out of the cappings for some reason, but they could also just be full-term bees you are seeing right after they have emerged, but you haven't noticed them before because they were lost in a larger population. 

You are talking about bees that are close-enough to emergence that are normally ambulatory, not pupae that are white, or near white with purple eyes, but no other coloration, right?

Light colored adults is not a typical sign of EFB. (EFB most commonly kills larvae before they are capped.)

DWV virus makes the emerged adult bees look slightly under-cooked, perhaps because they emerge a bit early, too. But they mainly look lighter because their wings have not developed properly and have been replaced by light-colored stubs. Examine the light bees closely, if they have fully-formed wings, then that is not DWV, which expresses as pathetic, shriveled, stumps. It is the consequence of uncontrolled mites vectoring the virus to the pupating bees.

Also, I am still curious about whether, or not, the bees and the subsequent splits, were all hived on new equipment?

Nancy


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## roberto487 (Sep 22, 2012)

Loadman1221 said:


> Kinda hard to tell in the pictures but I have some larvae that are during and turning brown in the cells I also have some larvae that are not not circular in the cell that are kinda straight...(if that makes sense)




I have the same issue with a nuc I bought this spring. The hive is down to 2 seams. I suspect is one of the foulbroods, but leaning towards EFB. 
This is what I observed, brownish and yellowish broods, and nicked capped broods. No sunken caps or ropy string. no foul smell. I let this go further for about two or three weeks after noticing symptoms, thinking it was cold brood syndrome. I did put an Apivar strip as soon I noticed symptoms. 

What I did. Shook the bees into a different hive box, and frames, that I had disinfected with bleach for a couple of hours and sprayed with a 50/50 solution of rubbing alcohol. After a week, I began to notice the symptoms again. This time, I ordered an EFB kit, followed the instruction to a T, and results were negative. Ugh. Okay, back to square one. Still I'm thinking it is EFB. Oh by the way, I have noticed a couple of dwarf bees being hatched. So, i am wondering if this is cause by the ailment affecting them now.

I took sample of failed broods and shipped them to the USDA lab in Maryland on Monday, June 11th, it arrived at the lab on Wednesday and because of internal policies, the lab dept that is doing the test, did not receive it until Friday. The head technician said the results will be ready by the end of following week. Well, Friday came and nothing, so by now, you must wondering about my anxiety. Let's say, I am disappointed, but I can't do much, it is free! Well, the USDA said I should received the results this week. 

Since, I work in parallel and not in series, while that was going on with the USDA, I was also trying to get Terramycin. Oh my god! I think you have a better chance of getting narcotics prescribed than veterinary antibiotics, in the USA. The Vets in my area, outright said they don't work with bees and therefore could not help me. I was able to contact the Fair county's Vet and he put me on a do loop, where I got dizzy and moved on. He was willing to prescribe as long as I contact an online pet pharmacy and have them call him for the authorization. The companies I called or checked online, have a policy of getting the copy of the VFD (veterinary feed directive) by mail, email or have the "vet" call them directly, before they dispense. Hence the do loop. I moved on, because medicine for insects or animals should not be this difficult to get in the US. In my search for where I could get terramycin without the fan fare, I came across a Canadian beekeeper store that sells a foulbrood treatment mix that treats both types, so they claim, with terramycin. This is where I saw the light at the end of the tunnel. For more info on the canadian product please PM me.


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## roberto487 (Sep 22, 2012)

Loadman1221 said:


> Kinda hard to tell in the pictures but I have some larvae that are during and turning brown in the cells I also have some larvae that are not not circular in the cell that are kinda straight...(if that makes sense)




I have the same issue with a nuc I bought this spring. The hive is down to 2 seams. I suspect is one of the foulbroods, but leaning towards EFB. 
This is what I observed, brownish and yellowish broods, and nicked capped broods. No sunken caps or ropy string. no foul smell. I let this go further for about two or three weeks after noticing symptoms, thinking it was cold brood syndrome. I did put an Apivar strip as soon I noticed symptoms. 

What I did. Shook the bees into a different hive box, and frames, that I had disinfected with bleach for a couple of hours and sprayed with a 50/50 solution of rubbing alcohol. After a week, I began to notice the symptoms again. This time, I ordered an EFB kit, followed the instruction to a T, and results were negative. Ugh. Okay, back to square one. Still I'm thinking it is EFB. Oh by the way, I have noticed a couple of dwarf bees being hatched. So, i am wondering if this is cause by the ailment affecting them now.

I took sample of failed broods and shipped them to the USDA lab in Maryland on Monday, June 11th, it arrived at the lab on Wednesday and because of internal policies, the lab dept that is doing the test, did not receive it until Friday. The head technician said the results will be ready by the end of following week. Well, Friday came and nothing, so by now, you must wondering about my anxiety. Let's say, I am disappointed, but I can't do much, it is free! Well, the USDA said I should received the results this week. 

Since, I work in parallel and not in series, while that was going on with the USDA, I was also trying to get Terramycin. Oh my god! I think you have a better chance of getting narcotics prescribed than veterinary antibiotics, in the USA. The Vets in my area, outright said they don't work with bees and therefore could not help me. I was able to contact the Fair county's Vet and he put me on a do loop, where I got dizzy and moved on. He was willing to prescribe as long as I contact an online pet pharmacy and have them call him for the authorization. The companies I called or checked online, have a policy of getting the copy of the VFD (veterinary feed directive) by mail, email or have the "vet" call them directly, before they dispense. Hence the do loop. I moved on, because medicine for insects or animals should not be this difficult to get in the US. In my search for where I could get terramycin without the fan fare, I came across a Canadian beekeeper store that sells a foulbrood treatment mix that treats both types, so they claim, with terramycin. This is where I saw the light at the end of the tunnel. For more info on the canadian product please PM me.


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## Loadman1221 (Jul 22, 2016)

Here are some more pictures that I took today... thanks for everyone’s help!


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## Loadman1221 (Jul 22, 2016)

Here’s some more..


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

OK, I've looked at your pictures, which are good. Not particularly worried about the under-cooked looking bees, though I guess it would depend on how many of them there. They do not look like DWV, to me as the wings are fully formed.

But there's something definitely wrong with your larval-stage brood, particularly as seen in the second set of pix. 

What you showed of your capped brood doesn't suggest AFB to me, at all. 

In the first set of pictures where you have a circle in #4, it doesn't look to me like they chewed open a mature-aged pupae or pre-pupa. Bee larvae, as they get to be pre-pupae, uncurl and lie down (head out) in the cell before spinning the cocoon. The one in the #4 is curled, downward facing - that's not normal for a bee ready to be capped. Perhaps that's a previously chewed-open cell that has been relaid and that larva is, indeed, younger? Or perhaps the cell contains a dead larva that hasn't been removed. Compare its size to nearby maturing larva which are much bigger.

Do all five of the colonies show the same symptoms?

Are the queens from a particularly VSH or otherwise hygienic line?

New equipment or used - sorry to keep harping on that, but that's a significant issue to consider when considering brood diseases.

If you haven't done so, do a sugar roll, or otherwise test for mites.

Order up a couple of EFB tests, send a frame to Beltsville and call in your bee inspector. It's time to figure out what's up. 

Not sure if this link is current, but it looks like you have regional inspectors on call:
https://www2.illinois.gov/sites/agr/Insects/Bees/Pages/IDA-Apiary-Inspectors.aspx

Unless what you took pics of are just small skeevy-looking, _scattered_, patches of problems, that much disturbance to your brood pattern if its spread across the whole brood nest will have consequences that will ripple through the hives for the rest of the year, and may imperil their winter survival.

Something's definitely not right, and good for you for noticing that. 

Nancy


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## Loadman1221 (Jul 22, 2016)

enjambres said:


> OK, I've looked at your pictures, which are good. Not particularly worried about the under-cooked looking bees, though I guess it would depend on how many of them there. They do not look like DWV, to me as the wings are fully formed.
> 
> But there's something definitely wrong with your larval-stage brood, particularly as seen in the second set of pix.
> 
> ...


2 of the 5 hives have them infected frames... the weekest hive has it spread though out the whole hive. And it’s only on one frame of the other hive which is some what strong. 

Yes it some of it was old equipment from last year that the hives didn’t make it through the winter.

I can assume they where from the hygienic line, they are 2 packages from “mountain sweet honey”.


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## roberto487 (Sep 22, 2012)

Got the results from the USDA yesterday and no disease found :scratch:. They tested for foulbrood and secondary diseases and NOTHING. I guess the queen has bad genes. I put a frame of capped brood in hope of turning it around. The population is about 2.5 seams now.

The above pictures were taken about two weeks after doing a shake onto a new hive. So, it does not look so bad, but you can see some yellowing of the larva and occasional failed larva. You can see some nicked capped cells. I know the angle of the pictures are not the best.


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## Cloverdale (Mar 26, 2012)

looks like PMS


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