# EFB vs. VSH



## hex0rz (Jan 14, 2014)

Visually they can look similar yes. But hygienic bees won't have larva that curl in the cell and have a yellowing or Browning to the royal jelly.

Efb also affects pre capped brood whereas with vsh, the bees are uncapping brood.


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## asd (Jun 10, 2015)

hex0rz said:


> Visually they can look similar yes. But hygienic bees won't have larva that curl in the cell and have a yellowing or Browning to the royal jelly.
> 
> Efb also affects pre capped brood whereas with vsh, the bees are uncapping brood.


Thanks.

And is VSH more or less present in all colonies?


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## FlowerPlanter (Aug 3, 2011)

>What are the differences?
EFB; Dead larva in any stage after the egg hatches to after it is capped. Younger dead larva can be mushy in the bottom of the cell, some dead larva often look slumped in the cell, larger larva that dies before it is capped can look stretched or shaped. Larva can be off colored from greys to yellows or browns. Usually no smell, but a hive that has it bad will smell more musty than a hive that is raising lot of brood. EFB is usually seen in many hive at the same time, more often during spring brood up and dearth but it is not limited and can be seem any time of the year when bees are raising brood.

I have not seen any cases where VSH bees made such a spotty brood pattern that it was a concern. Most of the time spotty brood means EFB. 

>And is VSH more or less present in all colonies? 
I would not say that, I have seen brood patterns that have almost no empty cells.

If you have any of these symptoms I would try to rule out EFB or PMS (virus spread by mites) first. 
http://www.beesource.com/forums/sho...Newbie-could-use-advice&p=1293636#post1293636


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## asd (Jun 10, 2015)

PMS - that's what it is. Thanks Sir. This is a revelation for me. I thought this was specific to females .

No, really, I appreciate the answer. This is what I was looking for: visual clues that reveal varroa presence cause I don't have time to test all hives. So Randy was right when saying that when the colony dwindles and have spotty brood is a sure sign of varroa presence.

These are pictures taken from a 3-4% varroa infestation:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/jr6kl1qa3wwoqq2/AAC_NIWq8G-qhBI6jp40odHYa?dl=0

Does it look like PMS?


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## FlowerPlanter (Aug 3, 2011)

http://beeinformed.org/2013/10/parasitic-mite-syndrome-pms/

You need to test dead larva to be 100% sure (lab or EFB test kit), from the cases I see around here and the one that are confirmed, more than 2/3 of spotty brood is EFB.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

asd, I'm far from an expert, and if you're concerned... send a sample to Beltsville for testing. I had a two hives this year showing some dead larva just before capping stage. Samples of comb with dead brood showed no brood disease. Pattern suffered. Take a match stick and check some of those perforated cappings, really that pattern looks pretty good.

Here is what I saw:






Beltsville:


Pattern from about 8 weeks ago:


Here is her pattern about 6 weeks ago or so (after a split so she's in a new hive):


Here is it last week after 3 rounds of OAV:


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## asd (Jun 10, 2015)

Impressive.

The more I want to go TF the more I see the importance of treatments in August.

However I will not treat this year until brood less... just another year and see if the results are the same as the previous year(I've done some stupid mistakes overwintering weak colonies and feeding them dry sugar).
Despite those mistakes bees recovered having all young queens.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

asd,
This is only my second year, I didn't treat last season until January and went into winter with three colonies from packages (in top bars) and two from swarms I'd caught (in Langs). Had a relative warm streak in January and I got nervous mites would kill the first few brood cycles if I didn't knock them down so on a few warm days about a week apart I OAV'd my Langs. One of the swarm queens was found dead on the bottom board in mid-March. They raised another and she was a drone layer (way way too early to mate here). So I killed her and shook them out to join the colony next door. But all 5 survived our winter and came through with laying queens until that one failed.

Personally, I think it's hard to fully calculate how much the mites may be holding your bees down without having both treated and untreated colonies (of course if you're only running a couple this point is probably moot). The comb samples pictured above were from a TBH that I cut over into a Langstroth this spring. Pattern spotty and just generally sluggish to get going. Unimpressive bees. Once cut over to a Langstroth the total broodnest area they had consisted of less than 10 medium frames worth... this is an overwintered queen in what should be her prime (mated last year in July). I put a deep on top of their medium and they went to down. I just gave them a super a few days ago. Queen's broodnest has expanded to include several frames in the deep that they have now fully drawn out. Completed three weeks of OAV last week. They will get broodless OAV sometime around Thanksgiving (3rd week of November timeframe) and maybe a cleanup in late December-early January before brood rearing gets underway. They started brooding sometime around mid-January last year so that cleanup needs to be before that for it to make any sense to perform.


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## asd (Jun 10, 2015)

I just sampled another deep single hive yesterday and I hardly saw one mite. So the tendency in the apiary is good. I sampled 4 various hives. Queens are still laying good and there is plenty of honey coming in. This is a good year in terms of nutrition. It has been a warm summer with good rains from time to time. The winter was hard.
I think mites have bad years too.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

I've never seen more than two mites in a sample alcohol or sugar shake. Yet when I use OAV (3x about a week apart), the problem has magically disappeared. I think the problem might be that there are pretty large amounts of capped brood in most of my hives at any given time. I know making up nucs, once they went broodless waiting for a queen to emerge/mate I'd notice mites on bees almost every time I looked into them. But there was no brood to hide in. I saw one poor bee with like 3-4 mites on it. These same nucs when given frames of brood chewed out softball sized chunks of the earliest capped stuff (all the mites jump on those first few chunks of brood to get capped). 

asd, please let us know what you end up doing and how the hive reacts. Seeing the impact mites have makes me very very happy that in my first year (last year) I got lucky enough to have all of my colonies survive over the winter. When new people ask me for advice now I tell them one of the first things they really need to decide is how they are going to manage mites... Of course they have no clue what mites are and just say "ok". And that if they just want bees to "have bees", they can expect to have bees die "mysteriously" every year or two. I believe many of the new people here in the USA are jumping in because they think Monsanto and Bayer and Roundup and Neonics need to be "fought" or something... strange motivations over here. The very same people that see a conspiracy behind every chemical can't be bothered to understand that there's a bunch of little disgusting vampires spreading all sorts of illness to their bees. It is certainly easier to let your bees die and blame some corporation than it is to be informed and proactive about the many issues associated with keeping bees at this point-in-time.


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## asd (Jun 10, 2015)

jwcarlson said:


> I've never seen more than two mites in a sample alcohol or sugar shake. ...


I did sugar shakes since my first season of bee keeping and believe me they are accurate. You have to see a shake from a highly infested hive - the mites fall so easily... don't even have to wait too much.

I decided to keep this hive under observation and test in a couple of weeks again. Depending on the results I will treat or leave it until October. I'm using the moderate to liberal thresholds. This hive shows just how important is the last treatment of the year.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

asd,
What thresholds are you referring to? The trouble I see with waiting until they're broodless is that any mite issue affects all the brood of the bees that you're taking into winter. That said, your pictures don't show that bad of a pattern, but it can get that way in a hurry.

I'll watch for an update. Good luck!


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## asd (Jun 10, 2015)

This one:









http://scientificbeekeeping.com/fighting-varroa-reconnaissance-mite-sampling/

The idea of populating a warre hive out of this colony is more and more present in my thoughts. I'll use all the frames in weak nucs. So far I only used langs but just for fun I would start a warre also. I'm not yet sure if I'll do it or not cause I don't have much spare time.


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## asd (Jun 10, 2015)

No more mites for this one:








End of story.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

Why no more mites?


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## AstroBee (Jan 3, 2003)

asd said:


> No more mites for this one:
> 
> 
> End of story.



Can you give us more information on what exactly you did?


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## asd (Jun 10, 2015)

I've driven all bees into this warre hive and applied OA sugar solution on them at the same time. I used all frames in other nucs and started feeding this warre. I know it's late but I think they will make it.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

Afraid the capped brood (with mites) will cause mite population explosions in your nucs?


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## asd (Jun 10, 2015)

jwcarlson said:


> Afraid the capped brood (with mites) will cause mite population explosions in your nucs?


They are a few weak late nucs that would die anyway if I don't do something. I think this might be a better chance for them but I may be wrong.


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