# Not giving up



## buzzzz (Mar 7, 2013)

HI 
I'm a pretty new bee keeper from Indiana. I bought 22 new packages from beekeepers in the state I live in this year. I did a inspection on my hives a week ago and found 12 hives that was dead or gone . I had these hives on two amish farms 6 at each location, these farms are organic and a spraying problem was the last thing I thought I would have to worry about . 6 hives look to have got into some kind of pesticide and 6 seem to have left the hive . These hives was strong in August so it was a shocker to see them in this shape . I have seen crop duster planes sowing cover crops in my area and I wonder if the seed they drop by air has the coating on them that's killing my bees ? I have been keeping bees for three years now and when stuff like this happens it makes you look hard at the bottom line I went from 32 hives to 20 in a 3 week span of time and winter is still to come . I do not think it would make any difference if I would have been keeping bees for 50 years you are at risk of bee kills at all times of the year and what the government is letting happen is not so shocking is it .


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## hedges (May 18, 2013)

*Re: Not giveing up*

What are the signs you saw which make you think it was pesticides?


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## rkereid (Dec 20, 2009)

*Re: Not giveing up*

Did you monitor for mites?


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## hedges (May 18, 2013)

*Re: Not giveing up*



rkereid said:


> Did you monitor for mites?


Yeah. This is my thinking. I'm not some shill for the pesticide lobby or anything. I just saw a huge die off a few months ago, with a large amount of dead bees outside the hive and immediately thought it was chems. But it was just very high mite loads.


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## rkereid (Dec 20, 2009)

*Re: Not giveing up*



hedges said:


> Yeah. This is my thinking. I'm not some shill for the pesticide lobby or anything. I just saw a huge die off a few months ago, with a large amount of dead bees outside the hive and immediately thought it was chems. But it was just very high mite loads.


Even if you don't treat, if you're concerned or curious why your hives are not thriving (or why they are dying), monitoring for mites answers one big question.


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## stan.vick (Dec 19, 2010)

*Re: Not giveing up*

What happened is anybody's guess, sounds like you may need to make hive inspections more often and keep notes, that's what I had to do a couple years ago when I had the same type problem, I found that my problem was starvation combined with robbing from the stronger colonies, also I did a lot of reading on the forum to learn what my basic problem was, my tip-off was bees dead in the comb with their butts sticking out and dead bees in front of the weaker robbed out hives. Good luck


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## buzzzz (Mar 7, 2013)

*Re: Not giveing up*

A lot of dead bees on bottom board .


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## buzzzz (Mar 7, 2013)

*Re: Not giveing up*

yes .


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## Grant (Jun 12, 2004)

*Re: Not giveing up*

Definitely not CCD...as we define it. Bees fly up to two miles and could have encountered pesticides, and mites are always a "usual suspect." It's not uncommon for good hives to crash under a mite load, despite bringing in a good honey crop and appearing healthy going into late summer.

Its a bummer no matter how you look at it.

Grant
Jackson, MO


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