# Some bees crawling in grass in front of hive



## e-spice

Today is one of those days as a first year beekeeper I ask "_Now why did I decide to do this again?!_". I would appreciate some feedback and advice on this situation.

I have two hives I got from packages in April. Both seemed to be doing reasonably well all spring and summer building up their numbers pretty well. Both hives have filled two-eight frame mediums with brood and stores.

After our main nectar flow ended about a month ago, I noticed their honey stores seemed to be pretty light so I started feeding them 2:1 sugar syrup. They have been eating a quart every 2-4 days.

The hives had been getting a few hive beetles. Nothing huge, I would just see 10-15 scurry on the inner cover when I opened the hive. I installed the Freeman beetle trap and that knocked the number back down. Other than doing a few powdered sugar treatments to chase beetles into the trap I have not used any kind of treatments.

A few days ago, I began to notice one of the hives had bees crawling in the front of it and scattered across the field in front of the hive about 50 feet or so. I would estimate the number was 50-100. This is still going on. Bees crawl in the grass and try to fly but can't. I lift them up and they can generally fly only 5 feet or so. Their wings appear to be okay to me and the bee's overall health appears good. I can provide a picture if needed. My second hive seems to be unaffected.

I did a little reading and saw where this could be a problem caused by higher levels of varroa mites. I opened up the hive a did a powdered sugar roll with 1/2 cup of bees. Only one mite came off. There were a few, maybe 30-40 mites in the Freeman oil tray since I put the oil in about a week ago. I did, however, see at least two bees that had deformed wing virus. That is the first time I've seen this.

Another unusual observation was there was quite a few less bees than I'd seen in previous inspections. There weren't enough to cover the combs even 50%. There was no brood to speak of, capped or uncapped. I did see a significant number of eggs though (one egg per cell, not a laying worker). The hive is LOADED with pollen and stores. I mean there is a ton of pollen in there. I did not see the queen but assume there is one since there are eggs.

Would anyone care to offer me some opinions as to why there are bees that can't fly, no brood, and less bees than normal? I must admit I'm pretty baffled by this. Thanks to anyone for giving me some feedback and advice on what to do.


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## Haraga

Any neonics close to you?


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## e-spice

That is a very good question. I should have covered that in the original post. I know bees can forage up to a four mile radius but I'm struggling to find any place even in a four mile radius that could have used a significant amount of pesticides. I live in a subdivision with huge lots that is surrounded by a lot of woods and government land that is unused. There is no agriculture that I know of know of outside of some people having a small gardens in their back yards. There is a lake that is within a couple hundred feet of the hives but the water there is not contaminated or poisonous.


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## JWChesnut

Crawlers are a non-specific sign of hive parasites. Summer Nosema (the imported cernua strain), tracheal mites, and a host of virus transmitted by Varroa will exhibit crawlers. I observe that Oxalic vapor treatment often resolves crawlers in just days. I do not have an explanation why a treatment whose target is the reproductive stage of the Varroa also resolves DWV and non-specific crawlers, but the impact is incontestable.


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## AmericasBeekeeper

Did you boil the sugar syrup?


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## e-spice

Yes it was boiled.


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## bbruff22

JWChesnut said:


> Crawlers are a non-specific sign of hive parasites. Summer Nosema (the imported cernua strain), tracheal mites, and a host of virus transmitted by Varroa will exhibit crawlers. I observe that Oxalic vapor treatment often resolves crawlers in just days. I do not have an explanation why a treatment whose target is the reproductive stage of the Varroa also resolves DWV and non-specific crawlers, but the impact is incontestable.


+1, I don't have the problem, but one of my club members does, and a couple of long time beeks were thinking Varroa as well.


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## Gypsi

does boiling cause a change in the sugar syrup that might cause an issue for the bees?


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## e-spice

Thanks to everyone who commented so far. Any other comments/feedback?


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## moni3

I'm new also but I was told to boil the water, take it off the heat and then add the sugar. I heard that boiling the sugar is not good for the bees. Like I said I'm new at this too so if someone else could verify this info that would be great. Monica


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## e-spice

moni3 said:


> I'm new also but I was told to boil the water, take it off the heat and then add the sugar. I heard that boiling the sugar is not good for the bees. Like I said I'm new at this too so if someone else could verify this info that would be great. Monica


I was having someone else prepare the syrup for me and didn't provide them any guidance on how to make it because I didn't understand how dangerous it could possibly be to the bees. I pulled off the syrup for now since both hives seemed to have enough honey for now. I may put the feeders back on after watching them for a few days.

There are so many things that can go wrong! If this is what was causing the crawlers I hope I haven't harmed them so badly that they can't recover.

I would love to hear other feedback/responses/advice.


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## Beeophyte

I have never felt that sugar water was good for bees, properly prepared or not. I don't feed my bees. I am very careful about how much honey I take from them, it's best leave them plenty to live on.


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## e-spice

Beeophyte said:


> I have never felt that sugar water was good for bees, properly prepared or not. I don't feed my bees. I am very careful about how much honey I take from them, it's best leave them plenty to live on.


Thanks - I understand your position. These are new hives I'm trying to get established and felt they needed a little extra help. I haven't taken any honey from them.


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## AmericasBeekeeper

Boiling causes two issues carmelizes sugars and Hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF), a neurotoxin formed when sugars are heated. "HMF is practically absent in fresh food, but it is naturally generated in sugar-containing food during heat-treatments like drying or cooking. HMF is toxic to bees."


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## BeeGora

Are the bees crawling around on the ground drones? I see them in front of my hives this time of year when the workers kick them out so they don't have to feed them.


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## e-spice

AmericasBeekeeper said:


> Boiling causes two issues carmelizes sugars and Hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF), a neurotoxin formed when sugars are heated. "HMF is practically absent in fresh food, but it is naturally generated in sugar-containing food during heat-treatments like drying or cooking. HMF is toxic to bees."


Thanks for the input on this. I've tried removing the syrup altogether for now since it seemed like they had plenty of stores. I remember reading not to scorch the syrup but I obviously did not understand how serious of a problem simply boiling the syrup is. Hopefully this isn't a mistake I can't recover from.



BeeGora said:


> Are the bees crawling around on the ground drones? I see them in front of my hives this time of year when the workers kick them out so they don't have to feed them.


Thanks for replying. The bees aren't drones - they're workers.


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## scorpionmain

AmericasBeekeeper said:


> Boiling causes two issues carmelizes sugars and Hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF), a neurotoxin formed when sugars are heated. "HMF is practically absent in fresh food, but it is naturally generated in sugar-containing food during heat-treatments like drying or cooking. HMF is toxic to bees."


I thought HMF was only a concern with high-fructose corn syrup.
Never heard anyone say not to boil sugar water before.


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## JWChesnut

HMF is the "dehydration" product of Fructose. Any fructose-containing compound will form it when heated, especially acid ones. It has no generic relationship with HFCS despite being used as a scare term by folks opposed to the use of the corn product. There was a thread this week about wax melter honey, which is patently high in HMF.

Acidifying syrup with external acid solutions in a pH balancing scheme is likely generating beaucoup HMF inadvertently through excess acidification.

Note: dehydration in the context of organic chemistry is different than making beef jerky or fruit leather. Refers to the removal of hydroxyl and hydrogen ions from the structure.


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## e-spice

Well I have some good news for now anyway. I removed the sugar syrup last night. I checked them this morning and this evening. There appears to be significantly less crawlers now. I'll post another update in a day or so.


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## e-spice

Unfortunately I was wrong and the crawling bees are still a problem. At any give time there are 25-50 bees crawling around and probably more I can't see. I feel so bad I feel like crawling around in the grass with them (and that's not an exaggeration).

One hive has the crawlers (blue hive), the other doesn't appear to (yellow hive).

The crawling bees from the blue hive have continued and I did a frame by frame inspection of both hives last night. I found big, healthy looking queens in both hives. I saw very few eggs and almost no brood in either hive. The lighting was not the best last night and I could possibly have missed some eggs. As I had feared, the bees in the blue hive are dwindling fast - some frames have enough bees to cover mostly all the frame but most don't have even 50% coverage, some much less than that. Yellow hive numbers appear to be fine. Both frames have plenty of honey and pollen. The blue hive is especially LOADED with pollen. The only positive news is the Freeman beetle traps are working wonders. I saw about 3 beetles all night.

Up until about a week ago, both hives were being feed 2 to 1 sugar syrup through extra supers on the top of the hives. I removed this since they appeared to have a lot of honey. I keep stretching to think of anything that could be causing the crawling bees. Some of the sugar fed to both hives said something to the effect of "Pure Granulated Sugar", not pure cane sugar. My wife prepared it by boiling until the sugar dissolved. I didn't know not to tell her to not boil it past dissolving and don't know if this was done. The sugar appeared clear with a slight yellow tint. I obviously did not know boiling the syrup was bad for bees. I don't know if this had anything to do with it or not.

I have started collecting samples of the crawling bees from the blue hive and plan to send them to the Beltsville Bee Lab.

I am considering removing some of pollen frames from the blue hive and reducing it down to maybe one super so the bees can guard the frames adequately. I would love any input or suggestions on where to go from here. As always, thanks for any advice.


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## LanduytG

When I make my sugar syrup I only boil the water, not the syrup. I see no need in boiling the syrup at all. Even at 2:1 I can get the sugar to dissolve, it just takes a little time. The people that make candy boards are boiling the crap out of the syrup. I'm not sure how hot it has to get but I know its high.

Greg


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## Gypsi

I make fondant but when you add cream of tartar and pollen substitute to sugar it is probably changing the chemistry, bees do well on it during the February dearth


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## JWChesnut

"Boiled" sugar is a red herring in this context. As is demonstrated by the healthy hive.

The issue (in strong possibility) is a hive parasite. In all likelihood this is Nosema or Varroa. Nosema is a gut micro-organism, and Varroa is the vector for virus. Summer Nosema is difficult to treat in a wholistic way, as the standard treatment (Fumagilin-B) knocks out weak strains and lets the strong ones come roaring back. Nosema requires a lab microscope to detect reliably, I find the macro "color or the crop" test to be unreliable unless one can train oneself to confirmed detection.

Varroa must be evaluated. Your hive (in August) will have mites. These will be carrying virus, and the virus will generate the exact symptoms you describe. It is difficult to reverse the decline of a symptomatic hive, but is impossible unless you act against the parasite.


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## frazzledfozzle

I second the latest post by JWChestnut.


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## e-spice

I just looked at the hive again. Doesn't appear that it's any worse than it was several days ago. The queen is still there laying eggs. I saw a decent number of eggs and even saw her actually laying them. The eggs just don't appear to develop into brood for whatever reason. I saw a lot of eggs a week ago, but don't see them developing into larvae. Anyone ever heard of that?

Even with a good smoking the bees gave a very spirited defense of the hive. That was good to see. I even got stung once.

I decided to take off half the frames to give the bees less space to defend. I took several pollen and honey frames and will freeze them and possibly return them later. I left any I saw eggs on. Once I did that there seem to be a good number of bees to defend them. I only saw two beetles in the hive. The Freeman oil traps really worked wonders.

I collected 100 bees out of the grass over a few days and have them in the mail to Beltsville. Of those 100 bees in alcohol only one varroa mite came off.

I plan to give them a little unboiled sugar syrup and a grease patty later today. I have an oxalic acid vaporizor and, since there is very little brood I'm considering doing a treatment of it as well.

I may end up losing the hive but plan to do everything in my power to prevent that from happening.

For what it's worth there seem to be fewer crawlers. I took some pictures of some of the frames in the hive and a few of the crawling bees. If anyone sees anything let me know.

Here's a link to the high-res photos. You can see the full-size photos by clicking the zoom button in the lower right hand corner. http://s1270.photobucket.com/user/GeffIvey/library/Bee Inspection 2014-Aug-02?sort=3&page=2

Here's a link to a short video of the hive entrances: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhIi45notSs&feature=youtu.be


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## Michael Palmer

The fact that the broodnest is plugged with pollen, and there are many crawlers, leads me to believe the problem is varroa.


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## e-spice

I appreciate everyone's opinions and advice. I gave both hives an oxalic acid vapor treatment tonight. I changed the oil in my oil tray beetle traps before treating them so I should be able to tell how many mites fall off.


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## e-spice

I checked the oil traps under hives last night. In my two hives, 48 hours after the treatment, the weak one had only 8 mites that had fallen. The stronger hive had 30.

I took a look at the weak hive tonight and it looks like the numbers continue to dwindle. I doubt they'll make it. I gave them a grease patty and some unboiled sugar syrup but that's probably not going to help anything.

This is a long thread so here's a quick summary of what I observed in one of my two hives:
- Rapidly dwindling numbers. Two weeks ago everything seemed fine.
- Crawlers, 50 or so at a time for about a week. Now there aren't any to speak of, probably because the number of bees dropped.
- The colony is queen right. I saw the queen and saw her laying eggs.
- Very little brood. Eggs were present but very, very little brood. I noticed on several different occasions there were eggs were in the cells but they never seem to advance beyond the egg phase. I'm not completely sure but this phenomenon may be going on in both of my hives so I need to figure it out.

Last inspections photos

Here's a link to a short video of the hive entrances

I appreciate everyone's help and suggestions and would love to hear more. Hopefully the Beltsville lab will give me some clues as to what happened. I'll post what the results are.


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## frazzledfozzle

It looks like you havent had brood in that hive for a long time going by the amount if pollen in those frames.
I dont think your queen is viable I think theres something wrong with her. 

I'm pretty sure I can see bees with deformed wings also.


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## Michael Bush

Things to look for in crawling bees:
1) deformed/crumpled looking wings. These would tend to indicate Deformed Wing Virus which is spread by Varroa mites
2) K wings (the two wings which are usually hooked together are separated and the back wing is in front of the front wing). This would be a symptom of Tracheal mites. Tracheal mites also seem to go with a lot of dysentery (not sure why).
3) are they shiny and black. This would be an indicator of one of the other viruses such as Kashmir or IAPV. Especially if they are trembling and shaking a lot. Varroa may or may not be part of that problem. Sometimes insecticides have similar initial symptoms, but they usually drop off quickly as the exposed bees die.
4) are there piles of dead bees anywhere. Especially if these happened suddenly and don't seem to be further accumulating, that would probably be from insecticide exposure.

Facts are always helpful in discerning anything. Do a sugar shake. Uncap some drone brood. Do a natural drop. Look at those numbers. Here's Phil Craft's numbers for economic threshold (the theoretical point where the gain in hive health is worth the cost of treatment):

Sugar shake (1/2 cup of bees) 6 in the spring, 12 in the fall.
Natural drop 24 hr 30,000 bees in a hive (medium size hive) 3-10 spring. 30-60 fall.

I'm not saying you should or should not treat, but those are a useful reference point for the numbers.


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## e-spice

Hi Mr. Bush,

A sincere "thank you" to you and everyone else who is helping me evaluation this. My responses are below.



Michael Bush said:


> Things to look for in crawling bees:
> 1) deformed/crumpled looking wings. These would tend to indicate Deformed Wing Virus which is spread by Varroa mites * I did see a few that had DWV. Only 2-3 though. I posted pictures above. Frazzledfozzle seems to think they saw some in my pictures but didn't indicate which photos.*
> 2) K wings (the two wings which are usually hooked together are separated and the back wing is in front of the front wing). This would be a symptom of Tracheal mites. Tracheal mites also seem to go with a lot of dysentery (not sure why). *I have seen an occasional bee that seems to have K-wing, very few though. I sent some bees to Beltsville and my understanding is it is something they test for. I'll post the results.*
> 3) are they shiny and black. This would be an indicator of one of the other viruses such as Kashmir or IAPV. Especially if they are trembling and shaking a lot. Varroa may or may not be part of that problem. Sometimes insecticides have similar initial symptoms, but they usually drop off quickly as the exposed bees die. *I have not seen any shiny black bees.*
> 4) are there piles of dead bees anywhere. Especially if these happened suddenly and don't seem to be further accumulating, that would probably be from insecticide exposure. *I have not found piles of bees anywhere, inside or outside the hive. I guess that is a good sign*.
> 
> Facts are always helpful in discerning anything. Do a sugar shake. Uncap some drone brood. Do a natural drop. Look at those numbers. Here's Phil Craft's numbers for economic threshold (the theoretical point where the gain in hive health is worth the cost of treatment):
> 
> Sugar shake (1/2 cup of bees) 6 in the spring, 12 in the fall. *I did a sugar shake on 1/2 cup of bees about ten days ago when I first saw the problem. Only one mite came off.*
> Natural drop 24 hr 30,000 bees in a hive (medium size hive) 3-10 spring. 30-60 fall. *I did a oxalic acid vapor treatment and saw only 8 mites that fell from the weak hive over a 48 hour period. 30 fell from the strong one over a 48 hour period. Based on these results and the sugar roll it seems to me the bees handle mites pretty well.*
> 
> I'm not saying you should or should not treat, but those are a useful reference point for the numbers.


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## rniles

You might think of collecting 100 or so of the walkers and send a sample to the bee lab. I think it is free and a good way to check.


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## e-spice

rniles said:


> You might think of collecting 100 or so of the walkers and send a sample to the bee lab. I think it is free and a good way to check.


I did send off a sample to Beltsville on Saturday. I'll let everyone know the results as soon as I get them.


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## Michael Bush

>I did a sugar shake on 1/2 cup of bees about ten days ago when I first saw the problem. Only one mite came off.
>I did a oxalic acid vapor treatment and saw only 8 mites that fell from the weak hive over a 48 hour period. 30 fell from the strong one over a 48 hour period. Based on these results and the sugar roll it seems to me the bees handle mites pretty well.

Then you didn't have a Varroa issue.


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## JWChesnut

There's no brood, and the brood oval has been backfilled with pollen by bored, unemployed bees. The nest hasn't been functioning for a month or more.
You likely had a virus spike that sterilized the queen.

You don't have Varroa because there is no brood feeding the population. The hive is terminal unless you can restart brood production.

Just saving the comb for next year, and shaking out the rest is the rational thing to do.

You could pinch the existing queen, and start over with a proven layer, but your likely to throwing good money after bad at this juncture.

The queen pictured may be the emergency queen raised after the original failed. She may just be getting adjusted, and you may raise some brood. Colonies in decline are difficult to reverse.


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## e-spice

The results came back from the Beltsville Lab. I am really impressed at how quickly they turned it around. I only sent the samples on Saturday (8/2). The results:

Diagnosis:
VARROA MITE (Varroa destructor) THERE WAS APPROXIMATELY 0.8 MITES PRESENT PER 100 BEES.
HONEY BEE TRACHEAL MITE AND NOSEMA DISEASE WERE NOT DETECTED.


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## mjfranks

e-spice said:


> The results came back from the Beltsville Lab. I am really impressed at how quickly they turned it around. I only sent the samples on Saturday (8/2). The results:
> 
> Diagnosis:
> VARROA MITE (Varroa destructor) THERE WAS APPROXIMATELY 0.8 MITES PRESENT PER 100 BEES.
> HONEY BEE TRACHEAL MITE AND NOSEMA DISEASE WERE NOT DETECTED.


Did you receive any information regarding what an acceptable level is for Varroa using the #mites/100 bees scale?


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## Michael Palmer

e-spice said:


> The results came back from the Beltsville Lab.


Where did you take the sample from?


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## e-spice

Michael Palmer said:


> Where did you take the sample from?


The sample was exclusively from bees in the grass that couldn't fly. The instructions on the Beltsville lab site said to "Send at least 100 bees and if possible, select bees that are dying or that died recently."


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## MTN-Bees

Mites usually don't like dead bees, so if you had a lot of dead bees in your sample it's inaccurate.


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## e-spice

MTN-Bees said:


> Mites usually don't like dead bees, so if you had a lot of dead bees in your sample it's inaccurate.


All the ones I put in the sample were alive. They were the ones crawling in front of the hives.


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## Michael Palmer

Good for nosema count, but not necessarily varroa. Take a sample from the core of the broodnest, where most of the varroa are.


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## e-spice

Michael Palmer said:


> Good for nosema count, but not necessarily varroa. Take a sample from the core of the broodnest, where most of the varroa are.


Hi Michael - Thanks for advice. I did do a powdered sugar roll with 1/2 a cup of bees about two weeks ago that were from a center frame. Only one mite came off. I shook the bees pretty aggressively too and made sure the jar was completely dry before I started.


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## ncsidewinder

Hello.. Today I too have the crawling bee's just like you have told. but mine are 200 or more. They are crawling up the grass and trying to fly but fall back to the grass. Did you ever get any answers to resolve what is happening??? Out of 20 hives only one has the Crawling bees. I'm scared the others may start and have no Idea what's going on ...Thanks for any help you may have found out..


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## e-spice

ncsidewinder said:


> Hello.. Today I too have the crawling bee's just like you have told. but mine are 200 or more. They are crawling up the grass and trying to fly but fall back to the grass. Did you ever get any answers to resolve what is happening??? Out of 20 hives only one has the Crawling bees. I'm scared the others may start and have no Idea what's going on ...Thanks for any help you may have found out..


Sorry to hear that ncsidewinder. Have you done any tests to determine the mite load in the hive? I don't know for certain but suspect mites were the cause of my issue.


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## ncsidewinder

Yes with very good results. have to really go through to even find any at all. I have noticed the bee poop all over the grass and some still have some hanging out and is dragging it around. I have NEVER SEEN anything like this ever. I'm in N.C. and have taken a sample of bees off the ground. I will be going to the state bee man tomorrow. this has me and I have got to find an answer to this.
We have 22 new hives and I'm scared of it going into some of the others .I will let you know what I find out . Thanks for the reply.


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## e-spice

ncsidewinder said:


> Yes with very good results. have to really go through to even find any at all. I have noticed the bee poop all over the grass and some still have some hanging out and is dragging it around. I have NEVER SEEN anything like this ever. I'm in N.C. and have taken a sample of bees off the ground. I will be going to the state bee man tomorrow. this has me and I have got to find an answer to this.
> We have 22 new hives and I'm scared of it going into some of the others .I will let you know what I find out . Thanks for the reply.


We'll sorry to hear that. I know how distressing that can be. I am only a first year beekeeper but the symptoms you're describing sound a lot like nosema. Maybe one of the veterans can chime in.


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