# CCD Cutout??



## beeware10 (Jul 25, 2010)

ccd get blamed for everything. my guess would be mites.


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## DPBsbees (Apr 14, 2011)

Do you have AHB around there? They may have just absconded.


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## fieldsofnaturalhoney (Feb 29, 2012)

beeware10 said:


> ccd get blamed for everything. my guess would be mites.


However, mites get blamed for nothing . Sounds like it to me based upon no bees, dead or alive. Absconded could be another possibility, but sounds like the had it made


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## ChuckReburn (Dec 17, 2013)

I'd say it's more likely they were deliberately poisoned than CCD.


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## D Coates (Jan 6, 2006)

"CCD" claims normally have the live queen and a small cluster of young bees remaining. Was there dead brood? Were there dead bees cluster with their heads in the comb? Was any honey liquid or was it all granulated? (they can't haul granulated honey in their stomachs when they abscond) Do you smell poison of any form? I did a cut out (ended up as a dead out) where I couldn't smell it but when I licked my finger I suddenly tasted a faint hint of hornet spray. I then asked about it and he sheepishly admitted his son had done it a couple months prior before they realized they were bees.

Reports of confirmed CCD have become non existent in the past few years. No one figured out what it is/was and the "sky is falling" hype went away as quickly as the cameras turned off the news cycle finished. Chicken little would have been proud. Makes one wonder if it actually existed at all.


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## ChuckReburn (Dec 17, 2013)

Homeowners often have to be "coached into" admitting they've poisoned a hive, rarely do they volunteer the information.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Second that. I've even been called to get swarms after they have had poison sprayed on them or a fire lit under them. No mention on the phone though, only after I invest my time and vehicle mileage to help them out, to get a handful of dying bees.


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## ChuckReburn (Dec 17, 2013)

Oldtimer said:


> Second that. I've even been called to get swarms after they have had poison sprayed on them or a fire lit under them. No mention on the phone though, only after I invest my time and vehicle mileage to help them out, to get a handful of dying bees.


Rather than ask if they've poisoned the hive, I ask an open ended: "what have you done to try and get rid of the bees?" Oddest response (I didn't go on the call) was a guy who used a can of blackpowder to try and get bees out of a tree. The resulting explosion had both the bees and the local police quite upset.


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## txbeek (May 21, 2013)

There were no bees at all. Only robbers that showed up when we opened the wall. The brood comb was decomposed, and pretty much all the honey was granulated. There was some evidence of robbing but not much.

We have lots of AHB which I remove regularly. But I have never seen a hive abscond leaving a full hive of honey. 

There was no evidence of pesticides, and i did taste some honey. This is a rent house and the owner contacted me. She said the bees had not been poisoned, and she was calling me to do a live removal. She called me in early December, but the weather and my schedule delayed the removal until Saturday. When I have done removals of poisoned hives, there have always been lots of bee bodies. There were none here.

There were a few wax moth cacoons, but not many. I have had a couple hives wiped out by wax moths, and there were cacoons everywhere and the combs were riddled with worm silk in those cases. But not here.

I have also lost a hive or two to small hive beetles, and the comb had been chewed to pieces, but again not here.

I have never lost a hive to mites, and given I only keep feral bees and never treat for mites, the bees in this area seem to deal well with mites. I have never seen mites on any of my bees, or on any swarms captured or colonys removed. My Dad is an entomologist whose speciality is mites. He has discovered several new species of mites, and he even named one after me. I have been helping him collect mites for 45 years, so I do know how to look for mites. But I saw no mites on the combs. And there were no bees to check for mites.

I have never seen a case of CCD first hand, but from the evidence I have, I don't have any idea what caused a colony of bees to leave a hive full of honey in winter. That is why im asking these questions. This is outside my experience, but I can fairly confidently rule out the other offered explanations. There were lots of bees working the hive in early December. Thats why the owner called me. When I showed up 8 week later, there were no bees but gallons of honey.


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## ChuckReburn (Dec 17, 2013)

I'll offer some alternative theories.

The first, from an early mentor who did removals for a living: "homeowners lie (the bees have always been sprayed)" and from my experience owning rental property for 30 years: "renters do some crazy stuff - and they lie."

It sounds like you didn't inspect the hive and, you are taking the homeowners word. Maybe it's less than a lie, and they "remember" there being plenty of bees or they lack the knowledge of a beekeeper and what they saw was low traffic, robbers, or a remaining colony hauling out dead.

The lack of bee bodies and lack of pesticide smell would indicate it wasn't a recent kill using an odiferous substance with a high LD50. Could have been the tenant, "fearing for their life and highly allergic (heard that before?), gave them a good shot of fresh scent roach spray back in November - tipping the scales and eventually killing the queen but a slow enough death they were carrying dead out.

When you state you "had a couple of hives wiped out by wax moths", it indicates to me that you failed to identify an underlying weakness (quite likely disease related to mites) as the cause of death and blame it on wax moths. I refer to wax moths as buzzards on the side of the road (they don't kill deer).

Could be it wasn't a pesticide kill and it was a viral / mite issue or just a late season queen failure.

I don't feel pesticide use could be ruled out without a toxicology test. 

For reference, we run mostly treatment free with ferals from swarms, small cutouts and BeeWeaver stock in our outyards. I would say my bees deal with mites pretty well and it doesn't change my impression of the typical homeowner or renter.


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## D Coates (Jan 6, 2006)

They possibly absconded or swarmed and the new queen died on her mating flight, but whatever the hive may have died months ago. The wax moth damage indicates they've probably been dead for a bit, or at least very weak and dying off. There's a good chance the activity you were called about in December was robbing, not actual hive activity. The trick of knowing what robbers look like versus normal hive activity is lost on anyone but an experienced beekeeper. Steady entrance activity with guard bees checking bees in and some bees carrying pollen baskets vs. a stream of flighty nervous activity that looks like a small scale riot as they pour in and out. Did you review the hive in Dec.? What did the entrance/exit look like when you did the cut out? Was it sticky, or showed signs of a high amount of dirty foot traffic?


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

txbeek said:


> The brood comb was decomposed.


So there was brood, so unless laying workers, it had a queen.

Could you post a pic or two of this brood?

Also, when someone says they have never lost a hive to mites, but also say they have lost hives to wax moths, it's kind of a red flag. Because when someone says they lost hives to wax moths, they are really saying they are unaware what they lost the hive to.

Your reasons for ruling out mites for this hive are not watertight enough. The reasons are you have never lost a hive to mites (which I would have to add that you are aware of). You believe the bees in your area seem to deal with mites, your Dad specialises in mites, you know a lot about mites, and in this hive you didn't see any mites on the combs plus there were no bees to look for mites on.

Against that, I would have to say that if a hive is killed by varroa mites and you go looking for mites on the combs, odds are you will not find any. The adult bees are also the wrong place to look they may or may not have mites on them. The place to look is the dead brood, which you did not mention doing.

In fact your description of the hive fits a hive that has been killed by mites perfectly. However the brood needs examining to prove that conclusively. I think you may have been derailed from a totally unbiased search for the truth by a desire to prove the hive died of CCD, plus the knowledge that you THINK you have.

Other scenario could be some other brood disease such as AFB. But there could also be many other causes, a pic of the brood would add more information and narrow the search.


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