# Massive early-Fall die-off in a single hive - cause?



## shinbone (Jul 5, 2011)

Of my 14 hives, one hive experienced a massive die off sometime last week. The hive was treated for mites with OAV in the Spring. No mite treatments since then. The hive grew fine over the season. No honey was harvested from it. The remaining bees form about a softball-size cluster. There is no queen.

All the other hives are fine. 

Anyone got any ideas on what happened? 

(click on the links for video)

https://photos.smugmug.com/2017/Bees-2017/i-XZ3RS2n/0/9d3d6f3c/1920/IMG_2392[1]-1920.mp4

https://photos.smugmug.com/2017/Bees-2017/i-WXSNh6C/0/2ba54511/1920/IMG_2395[1]-1920.mp4

https://photos.smugmug.com/2017/Bees-2017/i-xDM8Qtp/0/01a96de4/1920/IMG_2394[1]-1920.mp4




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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

It has been robbed? I see no food.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

Did that cold snap sun/monday last week ago get them?
I had some swarm traps that looked like that this spring when the weather changed and they went threw there meager stores and starved/froze


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## shinbone (Jul 5, 2011)

msl said:


> Did that cold snap sun/monday last week ago get them?
> I had some swarm traps that looked like that this spring when the weather changed and they went threw there meager stores and starved/froze


I was thinking a cold snap could maybe be the cause, but why the chewed-up foundation?

I am not sure about robbing because there is a jar of 2:1 syrup on the hive that isn't being touched. I would think if there was robbing, the robbers would go for the syrup, too?


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

shinbone said:


> I was thinking a cold snap could maybe be the cause, but why the chewed-up foundation?
> 
> I am not sure about robbing because there is a jar of 2:1 syrup on the hive that isn't being touched. I would think if there was robbing, the robbers would go for the syrup, too?


Bees do not freeze to death if they have food.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

agreed, and to that point feeding if you haven't harvested makes me wonder on the stores.
flip side is there is EFB in the area, I have burned a few nucs that colased, and have herd of 3-4 others. there are a lot of reasons a hive can be light and fail when it gets cold


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

Are you sure about the queen?

This looks exactly like my varroa crashes last winter when the bees were still present but dead on floor and in cells like that.
Too weak to warm the brood, just falling down dying, adult bees dying head in cell ( they move into the cells this way to keep warmth), young bees too weak to hatch.
They freeze if the bees are too weak, they are not able to keep up brood temperature. Under 10°C and thats the end.
I believe I see mite poop in the cells.IMO

Seems there were too many mites under the cappings in this hive when you treated.

Or as msl said, it could be EFB but I have no experience with that. The pupa looks sick but can be dark from cold.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

shinbone said:


> I was thinking a cold snap could maybe be the cause, but why the chewed-up foundation?
> 
> I am not sure about robbing because there is a jar of 2:1 syrup on the hive that isn't being touched. I would think if there was robbing, the robbers would go for the syrup, too?


The colony was robbed, and the comb chewed up by the robbers. But why? It wasn't the queen, and it wasn't a cold snap.

Another failure of OAV to control varroa. The comb with a scattering of capped brood, with many pupae dead on emerging is a classic sign of Parasitic Mite Syndrome. Colony loses bees to the viruses infecting them, they leave the hive, population dwindles, colony gets robbed out.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

shinbone said:


> All the other hives are fine.
> .


How sure are you of this?
I am concerned about the huge acceptance of oav and a wide range of recommended protocols. 
Personally I'm sticking with oav for a mid winter, single shot treatment only. And even then....as my hives are brooding year round, I still do an early spring as well as an end of season treatment using a proven method.


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## shinbone (Jul 5, 2011)

Thanks for everyones' input.

(Beesource is being glitchy for me right now. I'll add more info later today)





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## clyderoad (Jun 10, 2012)

I agree with others who said PMS and robbing. To me the evidence is in the pictures.
One OAV treatment in the spring isn't going to control mites, not around here anyway, and by the looks of it in your apiary as well.

I also agree with beemandan and question whether the other colonies are fine. 

I use formic or Apivar in August, 1 OAV treatment in November and sometimes again in the beginning of the year (Jan) depending on fall temperatures and condition of colonies during November treatment (capped brood present, mild temps for robbing collapsed hives).


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## Gumpy (Mar 30, 2016)

Sure looks like mites on the bottom in that third video. Did you do any tests during the summer? Sugar roll? Alcohol wash? 

How many times did you treat with OAV this spring? How many days apart? Did you test after treating?


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## Spur9 (Sep 13, 2016)

clyderoad said:


> I also agree with beemandan and question whether the other colonies are fine.


Shinbone, you may want to give serious thought to inspecting/treating the other hives for mites. High probability that the robbers carried several mites back home.


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## Cuttingedgelandinc (Mar 3, 2015)

Michael Palmer said:


> The colony was robbed, and the comb chewed up by the robbers. But why? It wasn't the queen, and it wasn't a cold snap.
> 
> Another failure of OAV to control varroa. The comb with a scattering of capped brood, with many pupae dead on emerging is a classic sign of Parasitic Mite Syndrome. Colony loses bees to the viruses infecting them, they leave the hive, population dwindles, colony gets robbed out.


Mike, it sounds like you are not a believer in OAV? Have you used it in the past and not seen results?


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## Riskybizz (Mar 12, 2010)

"The hive was treated for mites with OAV in the Spring. No mite treatments since then"...

and therein lies your problem in most cases


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## psm1212 (Feb 9, 2016)

beemandan said:


> How sure are you of this?
> I am concerned about the huge acceptance of oav and a wide range of recommended protocols.
> Personally I'm sticking with oav for a mid winter, single shot treatment only. And even then....as my hives are brooding year round, I still do an early spring as well as an end of season treatment using a proven method.


This is where I now am on my treatment philosophy as well. I wanted the 4 to 5 treatment series of OAV in Spring and Fall, with a single shot around Christmas, to be the answer. But I don't think it is for me. I treated all of mine with Apiguard in September and I am <1% in all my hives now. I will do a single shot OAV over winter. Have not decided about my early Spring treatment yet.


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## shinbone (Jul 5, 2011)

Before I get lynched on the "no treatments" tree, here's a little more info on this hive's OAV treatment history:

This particular hive is one of 4 new packages installed this Spring on Dadant Deeps hives. Each of the 4 new packages received an OAV treatment applied with a ProVap on 5/14/17, 5/19/17, 5/24/17, 5/29/17, 6/3/17, i.e. 5 treatments, 5 days apart. I counted the mite fall every 24 hours on two of the hives throughout the course of treatments, and graphed the results which are shown below. One of the monitored hives had a small patch of brood during the OAV treatment, the other hive was still broodless. The hive in question was broodless at this time. The mite fall for the hive in question was not monitored, but the graph should be representative. Note that the broodless hive had zero mites fall after the 3rd and 5th OAV application, and only one mite fall after the 4th treatment. Only one dead mite in 3 OAV treatments is indicative of a very "clean" hive, IMHO. 

Based on these results, I would submit that my now-dead hive had zero or close to zero mites after the 5th treatment in early June, and, yet, 4-1/2 months later the hive crashes from mites? 

(Obviously, the now-dead hive could have picked up a huge load of mites by robbing a mite-bomb sometime during the Summer.)


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

In one of your videos there’s a brood frame that looks like typical PMS to me.
Mites ain’t what they used to be. I used to treat once at the end of the season and that was enough. Probably because of all the added nasties they vector now……once a year doesn’t do it any longer.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

I might add that mite fall doesn't necessarily correlate to efficacy of treatment. In spite of them being new packages, they could have still had a pretty good infestation. If the treatment....for whatever reason....wasn't very effective, you might see what you saw and still have a problem.


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## mathesonequip (Jul 9, 2012)

Michael Palmer said:


> The colony was robbed, and the comb chewed up by the robbers. But why? It wasn't the queen, and it wasn't a cold snap.
> 
> Another failure of OAV to control varroa. The comb with a scattering of capped brood, with many pupae dead on emerging is a classic sign of Parasitic Mite Syndrome. Colony loses bees to the viruses infecting them, they leave the hive, population dwindles, colony gets robbed out.


exactly..... also.some virus problems do not involve mites, this is a virus problem of some sort.


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## psm1212 (Feb 9, 2016)

beemandan said:


> I used to treat once at the end of the season and that was enough. Probably because of all the added nasties they vector now……once a year doesn’t do it any longer.


I think this is especially true for southern beekeepers like us. When you have brood in your hive for 12 months out of the year, mites become much more difficult than when you have true winters.


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## clyderoad (Jun 10, 2012)

psm1212 said:


> I think this is especially true for southern beekeepers like us. When you have brood in your hive for 12 months out of the year, mites become much more difficult than when you have true winters.


They are a problem for 99.9% of us no matter where you are, that's for sure.
Here, mite/virus load + true winter = dead outs.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

> I think this is especially true for southern beekeepers like us. When you have brood in your hive for 12 months out of the year, mites become much more difficult than when you have true winters


The BIP records show the advrage southern TF keeper will have less losses then a treating northern keeper....

Shin I would give a long thought to doing some rolls and seeing were the surviving hives are at


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Cuttingedgelandinc said:


> Mike, it sounds like you are not a believer in OAV? Have you used it in the past and not seen results?


 I used OAV for three years. Two years in November. No control. The third time, I bought into the three times a week apart. Alcohol wash before and after. No control. Those that get acceptable control with OAV, good. I didn't.


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## shinbone (Jul 5, 2011)

msl said:


> I would give a long thought to doing some rolls and seeing were the surviving hives are at


Thanks for the suggestion! Most of the remaining hives now have their regular Fall treatment, Apiguard, on them. The ones that didn't get Apiguard got Formic Pro to test out the new formic acid formulation. This is the first time using formic acid for me.

I know everyone wants to blame mites, but I remain skeptical - the hive had a large and healthy population which essentially died overnight. Such a massive and sudden collapse is not indicative of a mite-born virus. Especially since the Spring mite fall counts indicates that the hive was mite-free less than 5 months ago. In the past when I applied OAV to a hive with mites, I would get huge mite falls, so I think no mites on the witness board in this case meant _no mites,_ at least at that time.

I know the hive had little food due to our very dry season, and I think it died during the cold snap due to lack of food, as suggested by MSL who lives in my area. At least, that is my working theory for now. 

I know I may be wrong, though, and I remain open to hearing more evidence and/or other theories.

Below are examples of mites falls I see when I've treated with OAV in previous seasons:












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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

is that a puddle of water beneath the dead bees in the third video? 

perhaps cold condensation dripping back down on the cluster during the cold spell could have played a role in the sudden die off.

that along with starvation due to what appears to be a total rob out of stores.

there's a fair amount of mite frass visible in the brood cells in the second video.

your mite bomb hypothesis has merit, and i agree with spur9 that those mites may have ended up in your other hives during the rob out.


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## Dan the bee guy (Jun 18, 2015)

psm1212 said:


> I think this is especially true for southern beekeepers like us. When you have brood in your hive for 12 months out of the year, mites become much more difficult than when you have true winters.


It's easy to get a 100 % mite kill up north but that's because you have 100% dead hives.


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## shinbone (Jul 5, 2011)

squarepeg said:


> is that a puddle of water beneath the dead bees in the third video?


That is syrup from the feed jar. The jar sits at the rear of the hive, and would not have dripped on to the cluster, though. The feed jar was placed by Ms. Shinbone while I was out of town, and I think the hive was already dead at that time.




squarepeg said:


> your mite bomb hypothesis has merit, and i agree with spur9 that those mites may have ended up in your other hives during the rob out.


Lol! Maybe, after being mite bombed, I was mite bombing my own hives. Actually, not funny.  That would fit with the hive being practically mite-free in the Spring, though.

I do see the white dots in the second video that people are identifying as mite frass. And, I do see the black dots in the 3rd video where some definitely look like mites. But, of course the hive would have _some_ mites in the Fall since it hadn't been treated since the Spring. 

I will recheck the frames for mite frass. The bottom board was scrapped somewhat clean with a hive tool, but I will check to see if any mites are on it, too.



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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

they may starved while freezing,but that's the straw that broke the camles back... Why were they in such poor shape that they got robbed out. Ya it was dry and my late season nucs did very poorly, but the ones I started early did well. 
if you haven't tossed the dead bees you could mite wash them, and or send a sample to bestvill to get more answers 

The classic mite bomb is a influx of mites post successful fall treatment causing colaspic, if it can happen like that it sure can happen with more time. and your in mite-bomb central souranded by well meaning but misguided newbeeks determind that there package bees will magicialy sprout TF wings or die trying. 
fip side is if a spring OAV was enuf for most, then we wouldn't hear all the supers on, supers off, block your supers talk.... it would simply be hit them with oav when you pull the supers. 

On the outher hand I know a lot of locals who hit there hives with a single fall OAV and do fine......you never cal tell with bees....unless you count your mites...lol
come spring when its time to replace your losses, lets chat about DIY instead of buying packages, you have the resorces... and if you want to try some spirited but maby resistance ferrals I should have some extra CQs looking for a home


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## Cuttingedgelandinc (Mar 3, 2015)

Michael Palmer said:


> I used OAV for three years. Two years in November. No control. The third time, I bought into the three times a week apart. Alcohol wash before and after. No control. Those that get acceptable control with OAV, good. I didn't.


It seems to work well for us. We have adjusted our treatment schedule over the last few years but with OAV and splitting, we seem to be able to keep on top of them. I am going to be looking for another treatment option for my production hives next season as removing supers so many times is getting old.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

>>Massive early fall die off <<

You have a queenless or failing queen and n the hive, summer bees die off early fall leaving no bees


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

Ian said:


> >>Massive early fall die off <<
> 
> You have a queenless or failing queen and n the hive, summer bees die off early fall leaving no bees


And the bees left on the floor? All newly hatched ones dying in the box? Do they not abscond in the case of a failing queen? Or are the bees in the box the rest which was killed by robbing?


> Maybe, after being mite bombed, I was mite bombing my own hives. Actually, not funny. That would fit with the hive being practically mite-free in the Spring, though.


2016 spring I had a colony which had a massive dieoff because of paralyze virus in one month. When I opened the hive there was a big cluster of bees trembling on the floor. Before this outbreak it was the strongest.
The virus infestation was a result of varroa.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

I agree that the sudden load of dead bees wasn’t directly mite driven. Looking at the frames, it appeared to be starvation. Clearly the hive had been robbed. What was the underlying cause of that robbing and starvation? When I see a brood frame that looks like a classic pms….I generally believe I have the answer. 
As always, I may be wrong…..


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

SiWolKe said:


> And the bees left on the floor? All newly hatched ones dying in the box? Do they not abscond in the case of a failing queen? Or are the bees in the box the rest which was killed by robbing?
> 
> 
> 2016 spring I had a colony which had a massive dieoff because of paralyze virus in one month. When I opened the hive there was a big cluster of bees trembling on the floor. Before this outbreak it was the strongest.
> The virus infestation was a result of varroa.


The obvious case would be mites, followed by starvation due to a robbing out frenzy.
But you’d see a F load of mites on the bottom board. Maybe that was mentioned, if so I missed it.
Other than mites, hives that fail from being robbed out are typically queen related. The summer bees die, the nest is exposed and picked on by robbers, followed by death from starvation.
Just my 2 cents


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

My experience with OAV is nearly 100% mite control IF the nest is broodless


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

shinbone said:


> Anyone got any ideas on what happened?


From what I see in the videos it seems to me that the direct and closest cause is hunger/starvation.

However, it is necessary to question what lies behind so few reservations. What is the most remote cause? In general in my hives the cause is in a mildly summer varroa infestation that prevents the colony from properly harnessing nectar flows throughout the summer.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

shinbone said:


> Most of the remaining hives now have their regular Fall treatment, Apiguard, on them. The ones that didn't get Apiguard got Formic Pro to test out the new formic acid formulation. This is the first time using formic acid for me.


I hope you will report what sort of mite drops you get from these treatments. I usually use Apiguard for my end of season treatment. I was considering trying the new formic for early spring....and it would be good to hear a first hand test.


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## e-spice (Sep 21, 2013)

Deleted


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## shinbone (Jul 5, 2011)

Ian said:


> >>Massive early fall die off <<
> 
> You have a queenless or failing queen and n the hive, summer bees die off early fall leaving no bees


Thanks for the input. My inspection records show that the hive had a laying queen as of August 12, which is the last time I had looked for the queen. Not sure how that timing plays into the failing queen theory, though.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

shinbone said:


> Thanks for the input. My inspection records show that the hive had a laying queen as of August 12, which is the last time I had looked for the queen. Not sure how that timing plays into the failing queen theory, though.


Then I’d say all arrows point to mites
Any washes done?


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