# Fall bees dwindling



## Keith Jarrett (Dec 10, 2006)

BBD, have you checked your V mite load latley?


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## borada bee doc (Feb 6, 2010)

Thanks Keith. Yes, 0-1 mites in a powdered sugar role using a @300 bee sample. Sampling of 10% of hives in two affected yards was done this week. I have thought about PMS collapse, but this is over 6 weeks since an effective mite treatment and most of the bees were looking good a month ago. Some of the yards were used for selecting VSH trait and in these yards, mite sampling was done in late August. Hives with the lowest counts in August are generally doing poorly now, and often hives with high mite counts then had robust populations at the time and also seem to be fairing better now. PMS has not been excluded but I a wondering if the bees are being unwittingly poisoned by the beekeepers with ongoing rescue feeding.


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## Keith Jarrett (Dec 10, 2006)

BBD you mentioned HFCS, a long shot but maybe look into HMF levels? Not pointing fingers just checking things off your possible list.


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## borada bee doc (Feb 6, 2010)

HMF has been considered and is still a possibility though I have lessened this probability as the first bees to be affected were fed only sucrose syrup whereas those fed only HFCS for weight were noted to be affected later(though this may be purely observer bias). All 3 operation used the same batch of dry feed and HFCS. Where would one test for HMF? Keith, do you think the Thymol additive in ProHealth is injuring the nurse bees? Thanks.


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## loggermike (Jul 23, 2000)

I fed Beepro and Prosweet through September and haven't noticed anything unusual. I always add thymol to any syrup fed.


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## red (Jan 15, 2013)

This is a common problem here in the basin and has been for the last two years. As we have over 200 hobbies't bee keepers , most people here don't even recognize it. I have seen this problem all summer in hives here including some of mine. It starts in stressed hives. Here the biggest stress problem comes from under feeding for spring build up and second in mite loads. My problem resulted from stopping feed before I had ample foragers to provide for the hive. In some of the cases restarting the feed salved the problem while in others they got to the point I requeened. Not all of them made it. I don't have actual numbers but it was 80 to 90 percent survived. All these cases came from package bees, splits and hives that failed to requeen them selves. I feed cane sugar and a little bit of beet sugar. I also used patties from both dadant and mann lakes. I had bees both in Ashland and up above Medford last summer. I brought them home in mid August. I put them on a really good patch of sweet clover. All these hives were in bad shape when they got home. The ones from Ashland are just now looking ok while the ones from Medford are probable a loss. Keep in mind my program is a small sample. I only had 85 hives total and am currently down to 73.


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## justin (Jun 16, 2007)

could they be just now getting into pollen stored this spring? you mentioned them bieng around ag in the spring. perhaps they stored buckeye pollen this spring? mostly thinking out loud.


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## sjvbee (Dec 27, 2006)

Look at pretreatment varroa levels. If they were high and virus levels high then virus's are the problem now. Also look at spring levels. I have found having good control in the spring equalled low virus levels in the fall.


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## LSPender (Nov 16, 2004)

What about looking outside the hive?

Just a reminder that bees collect everything and bring back to hive.

What it turns into in the hive is an unknown factor, this is where I remind all of Systemic pesticides which are being used everywhere. And its not just the pesticide also the carrier agents used ( inactive ingredients) in the mix.

side note , the epa tests only the technical grade of pesticides ( the active ingredient) there is no testing of the final product the is used in the field.

I asked my self often why is it that the beekeeping industry always blames itself, as if we are the problem. as I have delved into this problem I see its directly related to the fundamental change in how pest are delt with in agriculture.

Old program: spray pesticide ( Malithion) contact kill on pest, pest dies, product dissipates.

new program: poison plant (Systemic) ie. seed coating or directly added to irrigation system, pest take bite gets case of alztimers, then dies from something else. We no longer directly kill the pest we poison are food chain!

So, with poison plant we get what's reffered to as sublethal doses of poison in hive then in fall time it somehow becomes toxic and hive dwindles.

The challenge is provability, with the old system if beek got sprayed the results were dead bees on ground infront of hive, with new program over a very short period of time we just find a empty box or a handful of bees and queen. 

a lot of variables that we have not yet found a way to put the puzzle together.


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## borada bee doc (Feb 6, 2010)

Yes, bees are certainly bringing toxins into the hive, but we have much less control of this (and also really have no idea what is coming in). These bees have not pollinated agricultural crops since mid April, spending the summer and fall in outyards. The most common crops near these outyards are alfalfa, vineyards, and pot growing outfits. I did have a small vineyardist approach me regarding bees on his grapes, and stated that his "agricultural advisor" had suggested he put Sevin out to reduce the bee population.
I feel these colonies are experiencing a "death from many cuts". Many did have high pretreatment varroa levels and one affected operation does have lots of old comb in the hives. I think that today's bees have much less tolerance to adverse exposures due to the cumulative sublethal collection of "bee woes". The question is what stressors can we identify and eliminate.


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## Keith Jarrett (Dec 10, 2006)

BBD, do you cross paths with JBJ asa John, he was down my way picking up sub some time ago but said his bees were in good shape, he is in your area, I'm wonder how much of an area is a problem.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

borada bee doc said:


> (and also really have no idea what is coming in).


I think most beekeepers can say they same thing, including myself. I have no idea of the nutritional value of the pollen coming in nor do I have any idea of the level of pesticide entering the hive from farm practices.

I'm involved with a grain and cattle farm. In those two operations EVERYTHING is measured in and EVERYTHING is measured out. We know exactly what is needed to grow the crop and provide the crop exactly to the lbs of what it needs and to what level of crop growth we expect. With our cattle we send our feed for a detailed analysis and target the animals known dietary needs right down to the micro nutrients. Our cattle get exactly what is required to maintain the animals condition throughout the winter season. 

But with my bees, well, I'm standing in the dark a bit on that one. How many beekeepers test the fall pollen nutrition levels to ensure everything that is needed is coming in? How many Beekeepers know the level of pesticide entering the hive? Not me, but I'm starting to think more if a focus needs to be put on that. 
I'm pretty sure you Cali beekeepers are already doing all this, I'm going to start tapping into some of that knowledge


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## Keith Jarrett (Dec 10, 2006)

Ian said:


> With our cattle we send our feed for a detailed analysis and target the animals known dietary needs right down to the micro nutrients.


What a novel idea.


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## red (Jan 15, 2013)

Do the honey bees really work on grapes? I looked at a complaint here this summer and it was yellow jackets doing the damage. It can't be the pot as OR. law say's it's medicinal.:scratch: We are seeing this problem earlier in the summer here in the basin and by now it has pretty well cleared up. The problem still shows up in isolated yards on organic crops. With my limited knowledge in bee keeping I still think it is a viral infection present in the bees and shows up when they get heavily stressed. My bees went to the almonds last spring and then to the pairs and then to Roseburg until the end of July and then back to the basin. None of these bees show any of these signs. The package bees I bought and some of my splits I made from the above mentioned bees had veriest digrees of these problems. The packages had a terrible mite issue this year. I fed the splits and packages sugar syrup and patties until I thought there was enough natural feed available for them to make it on there own. As it turned out they weren't getting enough food and I had to start feeding again. This is when I started see issues.


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## Honey-4-All (Dec 19, 2008)

red said:


> Do the honey bees really work on grapes? I looked at a complaint here this summer and it was yellow jackets doing the damage.


When there is no nectar flow the bees will take any sugar they can get. From what I've seen in our bees in the wine country the bees will suck on the grapes once the yellow jackets tear them open. Don't think a bee can even physically open up a grape on its own. Once the grapes are open all bets are off as to whether they will be #2 or #3 in line to suck on the juice. The grape folks often blame the bees but I'm positive that a detailed study would show that without the jackets very little of this would occur. Iv'e lost very good yards over this issue in the past 30 years as the fruit went out and the grapes went in. At $2-3000 a ton the wine snobs money isn't about to let bees feed on any sugar that is on is way to becoming a $50 bottle of wine.


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## beedeetee (Nov 27, 2004)

red said:


> Do the honey bees really work on grapes?


I have a couple hundred wine grapes plants near 15 hives. My experience is that powdery mildew will split the grapes and then honey bees will use the juice. I don't think that a honey be has any way to open the grape itself. If powdery mildew is controlled I don't see honey bees on the grapes.


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## chillardbee (May 26, 2005)

It sounds like what I had 2 years ago. Beginning of August, 2011, I had over 100 hives and all of them were three high and still bringing in good honey and they were strong. I moved some to the mountian for the fireweed flow. By the 5 of September I went from 3 boxes of bees down to three frames of bees. that was my 97% loss year.

The mites were not an issue, they had been treated and tested and the level were lower (mid summer). But I did have all of them in the raspberries that year and before that, the blueberries. I can't prove the the chems they used were responsible but that was probably just 1 factor out of a long list of things the can go wrong. I have since stop doing pollination or in the very least, I qoute 200 bucks per hive in the hopes they don't want them for that price.

Last year I did no pollination and had a mere 5% loss this spring. I doubled my hives, got good honey and have a good weight and pops going into winter this year. This is how I remember it used be. I started treating my hives the way I did back in the 90's and also concentrating on the honey production and later I'd like to get into the nuc production. 

I still can't pin point the cause of what killed my bees that year and it seems that a beek, in cases like this, has to take up the art and science of forensics to try to get to the bottom of the mystery.


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## camero7 (Sep 21, 2009)

> I have since stop doing pollination


I've also stopped except for an organic blueberry field and an organic apple orchard. Haven't experienced any losses out of them. Last year lost all the hives coming out of one apple orchard.


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## LSPender (Nov 16, 2004)

Please note that the scientist studying bees have yet to find a sample of pollen from anywhere in the whole USA with less than 6 pesticides in it!!!!!!!!!

Like will link YouTube video later that confers

So that leaves me with the question of how to measure what comes in hives, it's all poison and we wonder why it's tough out there


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## LSPender (Nov 16, 2004)

15 min. video on youtube about bees

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dY7iATJVCso


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

LSPender; said:


> So that leaves me with the question of how to measure what comes in hives, it's all poison and we wonder why it's tough out there


One way to help the bees manage that back ground level of pesticide is to ensure the nutrition of the pollen is meeting the bees need. The feed we analyze for the cattle is never the same year to year. We either add to it one way or another to bring back it's consistency. It would be no different with the plants pollen nutrition levels. 

Why is it that beekeepers are always surprised that hives start failing months after drought. It's like clock work, and the focus is always on pesticides.


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## mnbeekeeper (Jun 30, 2010)

LSPender said:


> 15 min. video on youtube about bees
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dY7iATJVCso


thanks for posting that. one of the best videos ive seen yet. we are very thank full for marla here in MN.


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## Keith Jarrett (Dec 10, 2006)

Ian said:


> Why is it that beekeepers are always surprised that hives start failing months after drought. It's like clock work, and the focus is always on pesticides.


Well said Ian.


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## JoshJames (Jun 12, 2009)

borada bee doc said:


> Disease- Some of hives exhibit IBD (snotbrood) symptoms with yellowing larvae and spotty pattern,
> 
> If anyone has seen similar findings, your input would be appreciated.




Yes, but we experienced it in spring up north after being on the orange bloom in FL. The hives were treated with quick strips during the orange flow. The bee's had come out of the winter with very minimal loss and good clusters all the way around. Had an O.K. but not good orange flow. The bee's shipped up early May and looked beautiful. There are times when your bee's look great and then there are times when they just shine and they shined this spring. Beautiful brood and lots of it. Lots of pollen with good variety in hives. Very large robust populations. We only had one honey super(the one they shipped with) on the bee's. We went back to Florida to pickup the rest of our stuff and came back about two weeks later. Most hives had mostly plugged out their super of honey and about 80% had lots of swarm cells. We weren't expecting much honey that early and so hadn't supered more. Yet even though many were fairly full of honey it seemed odd to us that so much of the operations was affected. Sometimes you get a sixth sense about something being amiss which we kind had but just figured it was due to the good early build up and strong bee's. However, shortly after swarming a large percentage of queens never came back... Also, most hives staring showing this snotty brood that we've been hearing about. It hit our entire operation out of the blue(at least from our perspective). Many of those hives continually superseded through the summer. Tested for mites and they were well below threshold especially for that time of year. Out of desperation we flipped up on end hundreds of these snotty brood hives(which was during a honey flow) and amazingly many of them cleared up their snotty brood. Now they look good.

The only thing that was different for us was that our bee's were in oranges from mid feb. to early/mid april which is way longer than normal. That was due to a long scattered bloom from stressed tree's. Normally the early bloom will not produce. This year it did. But then frost's held back what would have been a probably great crop. So there was a lot more spraying going on in the groves and even though we were pulling a lot of foundation we did not have a swarming issue even though the bee's were very strong. We thought they might just be getting nipped enough to keep them from swarming... Anyway, maybe there was more residual the somehow messed with other things. All I know is that we probably won't ever know what happened or why so there's really know way to fix what we don't know. 

I have heard numerous people see the same brood but have no explanation for it. Some say 3 drenches of HBH worked. One said terramycin seemed to help a little. I know for a fact that flipping the hives up and giving them air for a couple weeks turned many of them around for us(virus, fungus, bacteria maybe that can't handle light and fresh air?) 


Hope this makes you feel better. It's always nice to know your not the only one with crap bee's!!!!


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## LSPender (Nov 16, 2004)

WHY THE FOCUS ON PESTICIDES

BECAUSE THE FUNDEMENTAL CHANGE IN THE USE OF THEM!!!!!!!!

we use to kill the pest now with systemic use we poison the plant, the pest consumes either some of plant or fluid exuded by plant then gets a case of something else then dies somehow.

And some people in the beek industry do not think that this can effect the bees.

The challenge to you is for you to study systemic pesticides and how they actually work in our environment as a pesticide!

The first step is to realize that with this change in pesticides the term spraying is not always applicable as in the past. An example are the seed coatings on corn, or the one a year treatments for rose bushes the you put in the ground with water.


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## red (Jan 15, 2013)

Josh, I'm not understanding the hole idea of flipping the boxes on end. Are you putting the bees into another box and airing out the old one or something else. Could you please explain some more. Larry, I don't doubt pesticides are causing big problems but the bees appear to be harboring a problem and it shows up anytime they are stressed from multiple causes. The one thing constant in all these cases is some type of stress and that sets things off.


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## borada bee doc (Feb 6, 2010)

Ian, how can we best assure the quality of nutrition during a dearth. Two of the operations fed pollen subs through the drought every 10-14 days as well as syrup fed in-hive. I question if the bees would have been better off if they were not fed. I suspect that by stimulating brood rearing, a larger percentage of bees began the foraging stage. As foragers in a dearth, there was increased flight and, thus loss of bee numbers. I have seen this pattern of depopulation in my bees for the past 2 years, since changing from HFCS to sucrose. One operation fed Dryvert and seemed to experience less depopulation. I wonder if the bees would actually do better if we let them go broodless during a dearth and just hunker down till a nectar flow returned.
With a persistently maintained broodnest, I believe, a gradual change to a more spotty pattern occurs. (Any removed larvae will leave an available cell which will be filled with a new egg, causing a progressively uneven brood age pattern over time.) Once a spotty brood pattern develops, this will persist until the affected frames go completely broodless. With intermixed larvae of all ages, care provided by nurse bees is likely also compromised. (ie. if the larvae which have developed to the gorging phase are scattered among capped and newly emerged larvae, nurse bees will likely be getting mixed pheromone messages from the sheet of brood, affecting feeding, among other things.) This would affect nutrition and thereby immune function, lifespan, foraging behavior (earlier age of foraging), etc. Does a dearth allow the bees a needed time to resynchronize the broodnest.
Also, feeding any non-pollen sub does not equate to the nutrition of pollen (just like infant formula). No artificial sub will maintain living bees without the addition of real pollen (though unsubstantiated claims have been made). We do have limited pollen coming into a hive in a dearth and, then, there is the bee bread stores that are hopefully present. How often is this bee bread laced with fungicides preventing fermentation for the release of nutrients? So we are putting subs and syrup on the bees, but are we harming them in certain instances? 
Putting it all together.. Subs and syrup encourage brooding; brood pheromone increases foraging; poor quality pollen, fungicide laced beebread, and diets of solely artificial pollen reduce bees fat stores which causes foraging at an earlier age. Do we have foraging stimulus compounding foraging stimulus, all at a time when forage is limited and distant? 
The initial question was focused on if the efforts of the beekeepers were actually harming the bees. I presently feel that pretreatment mite levels are the largest culprit ...but... I really do wonder if the dearth feeding had any positive impact for the above reasons. Was bee nutrition actually harmed by feeding in this instance?


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

LSPender said:


> WHY THE FOCUS ON PESTICIDES
> 
> BECAUSE THE FUNDEMENTAL CHANGE IN THE USE OF THEM!!!!!!!!


What are you going to do about it? not much but complain about it. 
A malnourished hive seems to be more susceptible to pests and diseases, and probably more susceptible to systemic pesticide also. Focus on the part we have the ability to manage.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

borada bee doc said:


> Ian, ... I really do wonder if the dearth feeding had any positive impact for the above reasons. Was bee nutrition actually harmed by feeding in this instance?


If as animal is starving, and it is not fed, or is not fed well, that animal will more than likely get sick and die.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

Dr. Spivak is both entertaining and informative though, I would assume, time constraints forces her to "dumb down" some of the issues. Plant more flowers . Yup. In regards to the potential effects of neonics. Yes it's true it can happen as the graphic suggests but the most recent USDA/APHIS survey puts in serious doubt if it actually is happening on a large scale and fails to point out the potential effects of the products that they are replacing.

http://www.aphis.usda.gov/plant_hea...ees/downloads/2011_National_Survey_Report.pdf

i would draw your attention to the table on page 16 which shows the only farmer applied pesticide detected in over 10% of the samples is Chlorpyrifos which has been around for decades and one that is used much less with the advent of systemics. On the other hand, the top 4 (and 5 of the top 6) positives were for beekeeper applied pesticides (miticides). In addition 3 different fungicides were detected in over 5% of the samples. 
I think any objective reading of this report would draw one to conclude that are plenty of culprits out there leading to poor bee health and one needs to take an even handed approach to determining which ones have the largest impact on bee health.


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## Keith Jarrett (Dec 10, 2006)

For those of you that get the ABJ, nice column by Peter Borst on page 1129, a good read.


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## JoshJames (Jun 12, 2009)

red said:


> Josh, I'm not understanding the hole idea of flipping the boxes on end. Are you putting the bees into another box and airing out the old one or something else. Could you please explain some more. Larry, I don't doubt pesticides are causing big problems but the bees appear to be harboring a problem and it shows up anytime they are stressed from multiple causes. The one thing constant in all these cases is some type of stress and that sets things off.


We just flipped the hive on end. No switching boxes or anything. Just simply taking the sick hive and flipping it on end so as to expose the bottom and top of the hive to air flow/sunlight. Most of the lids were off when we did this. But it was on a honey flow with small yards(only 32 hives per yard) so there was not a problem with robbing.


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