# Deformed wings



## brac (Sep 30, 2009)

You have a mite problem, and deformed wing virus. Treat for mites.


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## honeyshack (Jan 6, 2008)

That is one sick little bee. If you want to know how bad the brood is, uncap a few on some frames. pick out the bee and check her out. Look for signs of a bee unable to get out. Her head will be out and the tongue stuck out and dead.


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## peacekeeperapiaries (Jun 23, 2009)

DWV= mites, you have a problem and its been a problem for a while, DWV does not just happen overnight.


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## Delta Bay (Dec 4, 2009)

> Treat for mites immediately, the hive MIGHT survive the winter.


Or don't treat and they might survive the winter. It really depends on the colony as some colonies can and do handle mite loads that show DWV. I've seen it enough. If you don't treat and they do happen to make it through the winter and into drone production time you will see many under developed and wingless drones outside the entrance and very few deformed workers. The key in my view is to split this colony up if and when they build to swarm mode using their own queen cells. Then you have a chance of these new colonies getting through the next wintering without treatments. That's if you want to stay away from treatments. But if you don't mind treating you may want to do that. Still no guarantee they will make it.


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## Delta Bay (Dec 4, 2009)

> plus we didn't have varroa here back then.


The varroa has changed many things in beekeeping. 

I don't think the varroa has been in your country all that long so I would agree with your observation of very high mortality without treatments and in many cases that is true over here too. In North America the bees have been showing a little more tolerance toward them than when they first landed. In part because of the efforts in developing mite tolerant bees and bees themselves trying to work it out. There are many Keepers that have been treatment free for many years and feral populations are making a decent come back, which I think will help in the long run. There is still a long way to go.

I started a package imported from your country 4 years ago and have 4 colonies descendent from them today. No treatments at all in that time. They look better today in regards to mites and DWV then the first few years. I'll give it another 3 years to see if this trend continues.

As a hobbyist I have my bees that make enough honey for me and a little to sell. When fall arrives I always keep my fingers crossed in hope that all the hives will get through to spring and always look forward to see the outcome. This to me is all part of the fun in having bees.


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## AR Beekeeper (Sep 25, 2008)

I have to agree with Delta Bay. Years of exposure to varroa is improving the resistance. 15 years ago a colony that I overwintered and did not treat for varroa would crash in July or August. Now colonies can go untreated for 3 years or more without crashing. They will show DWV but will not die overwinter and will build and make an average honey crop.


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## FindlayBee (Aug 2, 2009)

I still need to do a mite count. I have a few minutes to check out the hive and found the following.

Two uncapped pupae, one with brown/dark debris covering it. The other looked normal.

One bee with deformed wings. Appears to have just hatched out. I opened a few capped cells and didn't find any mites.

Found one bee acting normal with a mite attached to it. Well, not normal in this photo as she is dead at this point.


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## bigevilgrape (Aug 21, 2008)

I think its all trade offs. My bees might as well be pets as far as what I expect from them, and I know there are other hobbyists who feel that way. If I get enough honey for the year next season then I will be a happy camper. For people like me a mite resistant bee that is less productive would be better then a non-resistant bee. I've never read into this mite resistant/productivity relationship before, its interesting to me and now I will have to do some reading on it.


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## bigevilgrape (Aug 21, 2008)

I think that makes some sense. Lots of information out there to sift though, not all of it reliable


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## AR Beekeeper (Sep 25, 2008)

The resistance we have in our bees today has been because the queen producers have selected for resistance. Resistance doesn't necessarly mean lower productivity, ask the Coy family who use Russians and is the largest commercial operation in Arkansas. 

The VSH line of bees were less productive when they were first offered for sale but that has improved over the last few years. The queens offered for sale today are much better queens than those offered just 10 years ago and I believe they will continue to improve. 

More beekeepers are buying II queens and raising their own queens and that will help spread the resistance through swarming. The feral colonies are increasing and swarms from managed colonies are the reason. Varroa is less a problem that 10 or 15 years ago and will become less as time passes.


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## Delta Bay (Dec 4, 2009)

> Interested Delta Bay, that the bees you got from NZ have not been treated in 3 years. Are they still NZ descended queens? If so what strain are they, and if you can remember, who was the supplier?


I was told Italian and don't know the supplier Oldtimer. They where treated before I got them. The original package did not make it the next season. I did take an early July split with queen cells off of it that did over winter. Queens are open mated with whatever is local. Two of these colonies are heading into their 2nd winter and the other 2 their first. How things will look in the spring only time will tell. The trend has been that the older colonies don't make it but I am hopeful they will this year as they look very healthy at this time. I haven't been able to say this about the earlier second year colonies from this group up until now. 
My best surviving colony is a local 2008 cutout that is going into its 3rd winter. This colony built up fast and strong after the cutout and gave me two more colonies that produced a good amount of honey this year and look good going into their second winter.


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## honeyshack (Jan 6, 2008)

Oldtimer said:


> I don't think it's that mite resistance ='s lower productivity, it's that the mite resistant ones are carrying a mite load but surviving it, so produce less.


I think another reason why they do produce less is, it is a trade off of having bees spend time cleaning out the mites and removing the sick. Only so many hours in a day.


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## honeyshack (Jan 6, 2008)

DWV is a result of the mites vectoring in the virus through the puncture marks in the bees body from the mites attaching and feeding off the bee.
However, since DWV has been prevalent for so long in the hives, bee etomologists (sp) have since discovered, the mite is no longer needed to vector DWV into the hives. It has now jumped ship and made it's way into our hives all on it's own when a hive is stressed. Ask me to back it up, and i can not. I am only stating what our provincial scientists have discovered at a bee seminar a few months back.


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## FindlayBee (Aug 2, 2009)

Did a powdered sugar shake test on the hive today. Yup, I have lots of mites. I also had a bunch of pissed of bees dressed as ghosts for halloween. Two followed me around for about 10 minutes and 3 waited for me at my car.

Another thing I found is that if the strap in my hat is too loose, my hair pops out the sides of my helmet and the bees know just what to do.

What I did was shake 1/2 cup of bees in powdered sugar for about a minute. Angry bees will result and can be heard in the jar giving off a cloud of sugary buzzing. Shaking the powdered sugar into a baggy to count at home makes them even more angry and you have to shake even more to get the sugar and mites to fall through the clump of bees that wants to clog the screen I was using.

Once I got most of the sugar out the the jar, I let the bees settle for a bit. Should have waited a long long bit. But, I didn't see any dead bees as a result. Most flew away and found me very interesting.

I walked about 100 feet from the hive and still had bees following me. If I walked back towards the hive more bees came up for a visit. It was fun and I learned alot from the bees today. No stings in me anyway. Not sure about my jacket.

Might count to follow shortly. I know it is high.

Ok, for a 1/2 cup of bees +/-... 68 mites counted. Assuming I have 200 bees/cup % infestation is 34% if we have closer to 300 bees/cup I have a 22.67% infestation of mites. If we add these two percentages together and divide by 2 we get an average of both the high and low percentages at 28.34%. Basically I have a hive with lots and lots of mites.

I did a powdered sugar dusting of the hive. That should have knocked out a few mites and is not a fix for the number of mites in the hive.

The bees that I collected are from the brood combs.









Powdered sugar containing mites from powdered sugar shake test. I used more sugar than I really needed. I mixed up the amount of powdered sugar for a sugar shake test with the amount of sugar for a sugar dusting of the hive.









The powdered sugar was dissolved in a jar of water. The mites float and can filtered off for counting.









The varroa mites are easy to count once filtered out from the powdered sugar.


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