# Low mite counts and PMS-looking brood



## pgayle (Jan 27, 2008)

Not making sense to me. I suspect there's something else going on. Feeding doesn't do much. They are building up a little, but not like I would expect. 

I think there are viruses that are NOT spread by mites. I suspect that those viruses or organisms cause as much havoc as the mite-borne viruses. My suspicion is that they are spread at least in part by bees cleaning out sick brood. I have done the colorimetric tests for AFB and EFB, and got +EFB once, and never AFB. 

The conventional wisdom is that the comb from a colony killed by PMS is OK to use, once the brood and mites are dead. I am starting to believe otherwise. 

I will treat for mites and requeen, but I expect that they will dwindle and die before winter.


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## Richard Cryberg (May 24, 2013)

What does PMS brood look like? I do not think there is any such thing.

Dick


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## BWrangler (Aug 14, 2002)

Hi PG

Been there. Done that. Same kind of symptoms. No mites. In my case it was virus based. I call it slow motion CCD. The prognosis is not good if that's what they've got. You can read more about it:

http://bwrangler.litarium.com/the-new-ccd/

and at

Scientific Beekeeping


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

How did you measure your mite infestation?


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## BadBeeKeeper (Jan 24, 2015)

pgayle said:


> I think there are viruses that are NOT spread by mites. I suspect that those viruses or organisms cause as much havoc as the mite-borne viruses.


IIRC, depending on how you count (some are related) there are somewhere around 27 diseases to which bees are susceptible. Many of these are NOT spread by mites. At least one (tobacco ringspot virus) is spread though infected pollen. Some are spread by other bees (including the mason bee).

However, the presence of mites obviously can increase the effects of the other diseases even if they are not carried by the mites, due to the mites feeding on the bees/larvae and weakening them in addition to adding the effects of the diseases they *do* spread directly.


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## pgayle (Jan 27, 2008)

BWrangler said:


> Hi PG
> 
> Been there. Done that. Same kind of symptoms. No mites. In my case it was virus based. I call it slow motion CCD. The prognosis is not good if that's what they've got. You can read more about it:
> 
> ...


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Got a pic of the brood? Kinda flying blind atm.


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## pgayle (Jan 27, 2008)

No picture. Maybe this weekend.


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## hex0rz (Jan 14, 2014)

Richard Cryberg said:


> What does PMS brood look like? I do not think there is any such thing.
> 
> Dick


https://beeinformed.org/2013/10/15/parasitic-mite-syndrome-pms/


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## Richard Cryberg (May 24, 2013)

hex0rz said:


> https://beeinformed.org/2013/10/15/parasitic-mite-syndrome-pms/


I have seen those exact symptoms several times over the years. Had it in one nuc last year in mid summer. Same spotty sealed brood pattern. Rare larva that are slightly discolored and obviously either dying or dead. Good pattern of eggs and newly hatched larva. Bad pattern of old larva. Worse pattern of sealed brood. No odor. Let it go very long and you see nearly zero sealed brood. Hive will generally supersede the queen and when the new queen lays will manage to get a bit of good brood before the symptoms return.

BUT one big difference. Every time I have seen this it has been in a hive with a very low mite population. Mites ranged from zero to two per 100 bees by the only valid way to measure mites. And, every time I have seen this suite of symptoms if I treated with antibiotics the cure was over nite. I follow directions and do antibiotics three times at five or six day intervals and have not had any relapses.

That can not be a virus. Nor does it have anything to do with mite levels. By the way, it is well proven that hygienic bees do not self cure EFB even if they will self cure AFB.

Dick


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

I would suspect efb


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## Richard Cryberg (May 24, 2013)

JRG13 said:


> I would suspect efb


The problem is that is a total guess. Here we have a poster who has invented a brand new disease and refuses to tell us what the symptoms are. Low mite counts yet he is going to treat for mites but does not expect it to help. No reason given as to why he is going to treat or with what. Hit a sick colony with MAQS and it probably is a dead colony. No reason at all why the hive is building up slower than he thinks it should build up. The sole data is he got a positive EFB test once and they do not respond to feed. No explantion why he even bothered to do the EFB test. It is not clear it was even on this hive. No explanation as to what is being fed. Could easy be sugar water so loaded with HBH the bees will not touch it with a ten foot pole it is so toxic. I have seen that before. Or maybe he is feeding pollen patties during a pollen flow? It could easy be as simple as a dud queen that is not laying many eggs. The overall tone sounds like the OP has had this experience before and the hives died as that is what he expects from this one and has hives in other places that are doing fine. That does sound like a probable disease. I guess with no further info I would suggest antibiotics suspecting EFB also. But, that sure is a lot of guessing. Could just as easy be some pesticide the bees are bringing home.

Dick


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## hex0rz (Jan 14, 2014)

Richard Cryberg said:


> I have seen those exact symptoms several times over the years. Had it in one nuc last year in mid summer. Same spotty sealed brood pattern. Rare larva that are slightly discolored and obviously either dying or dead. Good pattern of eggs and newly hatched larva. Bad pattern of old larva. Worse pattern of sealed brood. No odor. Let it go very long and you see nearly zero sealed brood. Hive will generally supersede the queen and when the new queen lays will manage to get a bit of good brood before the symptoms return.
> 
> BUT one big difference. Every time I have seen this it has been in a hive with a very low mite population. Mites ranged from zero to two per 100 bees by the only valid way to measure mites. And, every time I have seen this suite of symptoms if I treated with antibiotics the cure was over nite. I follow directions and do antibiotics three times at five or six day intervals and have not had any relapses.
> 
> ...


https://beeinformed.org/2013/04/05/european-foulbrood-efb-identification/


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## pgayle (Jan 27, 2008)

Thank you. I think it is EFB that is killing my colonies. I had thought that EFB cleared with a good nectar flow / feeding. The colony that was positive for EFB last fall was similar to the two sick ones now. I will retest when the new kits arrive.

I have been much too cavalier about EFB evidently, thinking it cleared on its own, as opposed to AFB. 

Assuming they are EFB positive, next decision will be whether to try shook swarm or antibiotics. Are some bee strains more susceptible? I would like input from those who have dealt with it.


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## hex0rz (Jan 14, 2014)

When I was told that I had EFB, I was told to requeen. I just talked to a person today and they thought I had sacbrood, instead. Regardless, I think requeening is your alternative.


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## pgayle (Jan 27, 2008)

Thanks Hex... Yesterday I removed the queen to a nuc. I doubt they can make a good queen under the circumstances. They will have a break in the brood cycle. Meanwhile I have a newly emerged queen from the good yard. By the time the new queen is ready the sick ones will be broodless. I can pinch new queen from such hive. Wonder if the EFB will come back from pollen or honey? I know it is not a spore former like AFB.


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## pgayle (Jan 27, 2008)

Meant to say pinch queen from SICK hive. (Stupid spell checker)


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## Richard Cryberg (May 24, 2013)

With so many bees being hygienic these days it is a bit hard to id EFB. The bees clear out diseased larva real fast so you often do not see any discolored or dead larva. Just empty cells. The first time I had EFB several years ago all I saw for a couple of months was empty cells where large larva should have been and hardly any capped brood. Every time I have seen EFB it has been in nucs. For some reason full sized hives seem to keep it under control. I have seen it during excellent nectar and pollen flow conditions. I have seen nucs supersede the existing queen twice and still be badly infected. I have also been told that the symptoms of EFB have changed in recent years and the thought is we are probably dealing with a slightly different bacteria. Every time I have seen such spotty brood and treated with terramycin mixed in powdered sugar I have gotten a fast response. I treated per the label and I have never had a nuc relapse. But, brood breaks and requeening have never solved the problem one single time for me. These occurrences all happened in nucs with mite levels of 0 to 2 mites per 100 bees.

Dick


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## Sunday Farmer (Nov 13, 2013)

hex0rz said:


> When I was told that I had EFB, I was told to requeen. I just talked to a person today and they thought I had sacbrood, instead. Regardless, I think requeening is your alternative.


Me too. Oxytetracycline and requeened. Sucked for production last year, but flip side, cleaned up apiary and all those young queens are booming this spring. Also.. I was going treatment free route. No confirmation or study on this, but I wondered if the mite stress allows EFB infection more susceptible?


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## BWrangler (Aug 14, 2002)

Hi Guys

Hope it's something as simple as EFB. Even just requeening takes care of it most times.

But things aren't so simple with Slow Mo CCD. Anitbiotics, if you can get bees to take or work it, has no effect. At least that's been my experience.

Looking at the age the larva die are a good way to spot EFB. It's harder with slow mo CCD. The dead larva die at various stages. And look like a symptomatic mix of both foulbroods and neglect.


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## FlowerPlanter (Aug 3, 2011)

You need to send a sample in for testing, it's free!

http://www.ars.usda.gov/Main/docs.htm?docid=7472

Here's some threads that many help you;
Lots of pictures, links and treatment options.

http://www.beesource.com/forums/sho...d-what-options-(-quot-It-s-complicated-quot-)

http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?298750-Pseudo-Laying-Workers

http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?304087-What-is-going-on-with-this

http://www.beesource.com/forums/sho...Newbie-could-use-advice&p=1293636#post1293636

Lots of EFB going around last year (many from packages but not all), at least 75% of the time in spring and summer spotty brood turned out to be EFB with lab confirmation. 

I have helped many identify and recover from some bad cases, let me know if I can help you.


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## FlowerPlanter (Aug 3, 2011)

>Wonder if the EFB will come back from pollen or honey? 

Yes, EFB bacteria can live in honey for 7 month, in pollen for at least 2 years, on comb for 1-2 years.

Much of the remedies that work for some do not work for others, might just be that some had PMS caused by mites and other had EFB. This shows the importance of a test from the lab. I would also not recommend the test sticks they give false negatives, confirmed on this site after lab results.


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## pgayle (Jan 27, 2008)

Flower Planter, Thank you. This is exactly the kind of information I was looking for. I had wondered about the sensitivity/specificity of the colorimetric test strips. Weather permitting I will get into them this weekend, get pictures, and cut out a sample of brood comb for the USDA lab. 

I knew that EFB was not a spore-former, therefore not as persistent as AFB, but I had never seen any data on how long EFB lasted once the brood was gone. Great information, thank you again. New information to me. It is not addressed in the current edition of "Honey Bee Biology and Beekeeping. In that text, EFB is discussed as a disease that will generally clear up with requeening and/or a good flow. That is what had me baffled. 

Do you have any data on the inoculum required to make a bee sick? How heavily does the pollen or bee bread have to be infected, before enough shows up in the larval food to infect a larva?


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## FlowerPlanter (Aug 3, 2011)

>Do you have any data on the inoculum required to make a bee sick?

I have read several times and it mean nothing to me, it's in scientific notation for the amount of bacteria needed. There is dose that will kill a larva, there is also a dose that does not kill the larva but the larva is still infected and may infect the cell for future larva. Infected larva that survive may not have the longevity to make it through winter. 

Here's a good read about by G. F. White 1920, he first identified EFB in 1908, much of what he writes about is still current today, almost a hundred years later. 

https://books.google.com/books?hl=e...epage&q=european foulbrood resistance&f=false


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## pgayle (Jan 27, 2008)

I checked them today. The EFB strip test was positive. AFB was negative on same 2 larvae. I also collected a brood comb sample for Beltsville. This is the colony that had very low mite counts last fall and recently. 

I have ordered terramycin. I plan to treat and requeen. 

I have another hive in the same location with similar looking brood, not tested. I made them queenless about a week ago. They now have two decent looking queen cells. The bees have cleaned up the sick brood. I could not test this one because there are no larvae to test. I am not sure if the break in the brood cycle is enough, but I plan to treat both anyway. Haven't decided whether to let them keep the queen they are making, or bring them a new one in a couple of weeks. 

I have two new queens from other stock and mated elsewhere. One is laying up a storm. The other emerged a week ago and hope she will do well. I hope that the brood cycle break, new queens, plus terramycin will do the trick. 

I can't post pictures. Computer and modem painfully slow.


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## FlowerPlanter (Aug 3, 2011)

Low mite counts can accompany AFB and EFB, from what I have seen around here if they have low mite counts and spotty brood it is almost always EFB or could be AFB.

Where did you get your bees? When did they start showing symptoms?

Do not you use HBH or essential oils?

Sounds like you have a plan for your treatment keep us posted.


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## pgayle (Jan 27, 2008)

No HBH or essential oils were ever used. No mite treatments, because counts low. 

My bees are from a line I had maintained without treatment since 2009, originally a Russian line queen. I have been very happy with them, pretty much problem-free and good honey producers. I still have those and they have been happily requeening themselves and making honey. 

Around 2012 I moved one nuc with one of their swarm cells to the present area. That colony swarmed in 2013, and I got a swarm from a shrub about 15 ft from my colony. However, the swarm queen was unmarked, and I had seen my marked 2012 queen that spring, so I was never quite sure if the swarm I caught was an afterswarm from my bees, or some random swarm. So the lineage became uncertain. I did several splits* from it in 2014, and they were doing well till one dwindled last summer. It was faint EFB positive on the quick test. The mistake I made was combining the remaining bees with a healthy sister colony, following what I thought to be true, that bees can clear it. 

Another beekeeper with whom I share a location had a colony in the same yard that also dwindled and died last summer with similar symptoms to mine. He bought a couple of nucs each year in 2014 and 2015. His 2014 nucs are dead. One of his two 2015 nucs is still living, and has excellent brood pattern in several deep boxes last time I looked. And I think his other 2015 nuc was lost due to accidental queen loss. I need to find out where he got those 2015 nucs; they are good. 

*The person who got one of my 2014 splits says that colony is still thriving, in a location about 15 miles away. So whatever happened to start the infection probably happened last summer. Who knows.. one of the purchased nucs, ferals ... I kind of suspect my yard-partner's 2014 nucs but you never know.

My original 2009 Russian line is still going strong in my home yard, about a hundred miles from the sick yard.


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## FlowerPlanter (Aug 3, 2011)

>No HBH or essential oils were ever used. No mite treatments, because counts low.

Good don't use EOs it will make EFB and AFB worse. 

>Another beekeeper with whom I share a location had a colony in the same yard that also dwindled and died last summer with similar symptoms to mine. 

This sounds like where you picked it up from. where did his hive come from?

If you have bees that were in the same yard that did not show symptoms breed/split from those hives. Requeen your sick hives with this stock. IMO it is more affective than getting another queen that does not have any resistance.


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## pgayle (Jan 27, 2008)

Update: I got the results back from Beltsville last week on the comb sample. EFB only. No AFB. The Beltsville bee lab findings agree with the rapid field test colorimetric strip tests that I bought from Dadant.

On one of my brood pictures (enlarged on computer screen) I saw one larva that looked like what AFB is supposed to look like, with the "pupal tongue". I went back to the yard and found this exact dead larva. The scale removed easily, but I spent another AFB test kit, just testing this one specific larva. The quick test was negative.

I have treated both colonies with Terramycin x3 doses. 

The colony that I de-queened cleaned up the sick brood in a hurry, once there were no more sick larvae coming on as fast as they could remove them. They made a new queen and she is laying. As of now, I will just feed and monitor. Too early to assess her brood.

The other sick colony did not get their queen removed quite as fast. I could not find her, so I put excluders between the boxes and found her and caged her. I can't remember the dates because I don't have my notes with me; I think a week and a half or two weeks ago. But they have cleaned up the sick brood. I may keep her caged until the last of the old sealed brood emerges.

I have a new queen in reserve, raised from bees in an unaffected yard, and kept elsewhere for now. This is a queen descended from a Russian queen acquired in 2010, untreated so far. Right now she is in a growing nuc with four frames of solid capped brood. I might use her to requeen one of the two treated colonies. Or I might combine the two treated colonies and give the new queen to the combined unit. 

I threw out a lot of pollen frames because of what FlowerPlanter said about the length of time the bacterium remains viable in pollen. I have burned a lot of frames even though the literature says you don't have to. I plan to scorch the woodenware.

What I have learned: 

1. This EFB seems to be different than what I had been taught, so I am being really careful with it. It seems quite capable of killing a colony that is unaffected by mites. I had low mite counts on both of my sick colonies. If there is something else going on, I have not identified it.
2. The rapid tests have reasonable sensitivity, and I think they are worth the money even at $13.50 each plus shipping. I would be interested in hearing the results of others, as to the correlation with the official bee lab testing.
3. Presence of a "pupal tongue" is not specific for AFB, if you believe the rapid test.
4. There is point in "treatment free" where you just treat and requeen. Especially when someone else's bees are involved.

To be continued.. another beekeeper has two colonies in the yard with mine. One was sick with the same symptoms, and the other was very strong. His strong one robbed out the sick ones. He treated both of his, with one more treatment to go. Neither of us had the gumption to withhold treatment on the strong one. We just wanted the EFB gone. But I might steal a frame of eggs/young larvae from him once mine have finished treatment and are brood-free.


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## FlowerPlanter (Aug 3, 2011)

Good luck keep us posted, I am following your thread.

Any idea how it got into your apiary? New package? Any new beekeepers in the area? Did both hives seem to get it at the same time?


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## pgayle (Jan 27, 2008)

The EFB treated colony came through winter looking strong. Brood looks nice. My plan had been to treat and requeen, but I kind of did that already by removing the queen and letting them make one during the treatment. Between the Terramycin, brood break and fresh daughter queen, something seems to have worked. I will keep an eye on it. Right now it is still in a yard by itself.


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