# Deformed wing virus



## Delta (Jan 23, 2013)

I would like to stay as treatment free as possible but what do you guys do when confronted with deformed wing virus. I have a very lite case of it, I see one bee once and a while and I check the outside of the hive multiple times a day.


----------



## AR Beekeeper (Sep 25, 2008)

DWV has no treatment for the virus, all you can do is try to control the varroa in the colony. Varroa affects colonies differently in the northern states than it does in the southern ones. Here in my area DWV in a colony will be severe one year and will almost disappear the next, even if the mite load is the same. Here it is not a death sentence for the colony as it is in other areas.

I can only give advice based on my experience and that would be to do natural mite fall counts, and if they get over the numbers where serious damage is being done to the colony, do some sort of treatment that you are comfortable with. Sugar dustings remove mites on adult bees, but about 70% of the mites are in capped brood. This means you will need to do several dustings, and you will only remove about 30% of the mites that are on the adult bees. It is less disruptive to use Hopguard and remove 90% of the mites that are on the adult bees, and then repeat once a week for 2 more weeks. If you can wait until the bees are in a broodless period one treatment will do the job. You don't have to kill all the mites, just keep them at a level the bees can tolerate.

Perhaps a northern beekeeper from your area will give you advice that is more specific.

I am sorry, I just remembered this is the treatment free forum and I can't mention any sort of treatments so please disregard those portions of my answer.


----------



## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

> but what do you guys do when confronted with deformed wing virus.

I occasionally see a bee with deformed wings. I ignore them. I never see a lot of them. DWV was around long before Varroa. Varroa just spread it faster. In the end it comes back down to: the only way to breed bees that can survive without treatments is to stop treating.


----------



## JWChesnut (Jul 31, 2013)

High loads of DWV have likely damaged your queen, and requeening would be aggressive intervention.
A 2011 paper by Laurent Gauthier ( http://www.plosone.org/article/fetc....1371/journal.pone.0016217&representation=PDF ) finds that queens with high loads of DWV virus suffer from ovary degeneration. The DWV (and similar virii) form "crystalline arrays" in the ovaries completely disrupting them and causing loss of egg-laying ability. Gauthier makes the important observation that the enormous food demands of queens and their long lifetimes means they are "filters" that absorb enormous virus and pesticide loads -- far more likely to be affected than workers.

Directed breeding -where colonies with quantified beneficial expressions- are *preserved* as mating stock is actually how breeding accomplishes improved genotypes. American Chestnuts had a "live-and-let-die" challenge against fungus, they are now effectively extinct.


----------



## Beregondo (Jun 21, 2011)

It's a pretty huge leap of illogic from 
" deformed wing virus. I have a very lite case of it" 
to
"High loads of DWV have likely damaged your queen..."

I don't treat my hives.
Last year i saw a few bees with deformed wings, but saw no evidence of a mite problem, and did nothing.
I got several splits from that hive last year, and it continues to thrive, still untreated, and with the original queen.

If you want to stay as treatment free as possible, don't treat.
If you want to practice IPM treat if you get a high mite load.

But the only way to get bees that don't require treatment is not treating them.


----------



## JWChesnut (Jul 31, 2013)

It both counterproductive and against the forum etiquette to get into a pissin' contest on treatment.
Irrespective of personal decisions on treatment, however is **not** true "the **only** way to get bees that don't require treatment is not treating them." 

Counter-examples are manifest. I am professionally most familiar with plant breeding. Consider virus resistance in Tomato's (TMR) -- selective hybridization achieved "treatment free" virus resistance. This was not the result of home gardeners letting their vines wilt -- it was the result of directed selection, and cross-fertilization. No amount of home gardening was likely to achieve "fixing" the mutation into the population. Tomato have the huge advantage over bees in being naturally inbred-- once fixed a genotype can be sustained by simply collecting the seeds. Bees are obligate and promiscuous out-crossers.

In other words -- if the goal is achieve treatment-free beekeeping that can be sustained then accepting the imperatives of directed breeding is part of the package. Directed breeding evaluates gene expressions and preserves the most favorable cases. Simply put, preserving queens and colonies to preserve their genes may involve intervention. 

Africanized adaptations to Varroa -- grooming that chews the legs on phoretic mites, and rapid swarming are likely to fix into a wild population. The grooming appears to involve a single gene, and rapid swarming has a population advantage that will dominate other genotypes. VSH -- a separate and highly selected set of genes-- are very unlikely to "win the lottery". VSH may involve 39 separate genes -- and the likelihood of that fragile combinations entering the wild population is vanishingly small in an obligate outcrossing species.


----------



## Beregondo (Jun 21, 2011)

I'm not aware of a way to determine whether bees survive w/o treatment other than to test by not treating and note the result.
Whatever effort goes into selection, that *is* an essential step.

I wasn't trying to to start controversy, I was voicing an opinion relevant to the OP's implied question of what he might or might not do to stay "as treatment free as possible: in light of his/her concern at having seen bees with deformed wings.

If you don't want a _"pissin' contest"_, don't start _"pissin' "_.


----------



## JWChesnut (Jul 31, 2013)

In real-world breeding selection, plants (my core experience) are challenged and trait expression quantified. The best performers are retained, and the step repeated against the next generation. Very seldom do you have the binary "die-not die" testing because it very difficult to jump from one state to the next. Instead you build up a strain selected for best performance against a single trait or behavior (e.g. VSH) then back cross that trait into other bloodlines until a suitable mix of characters is obtained. VSH is quantified *not* by die-not die status, but by a assay that kills a group of brood with liquid nitrogen and then quantifies the kill and clean rate and completeness.

Species, especially obligate out-crossing ones, have very high resistance to "drift". These species are formed by very discrete founder events and then retain very conservative character. Bees are a special case: they have multiple fathers within a colony. There is fascinating research that shows the high variability this ensures is used to divide colony tasks-- various paternal bees are more or less sensitive to "juvenile hormone" and conduct different roles in the hive and swarm. 
The outcrossing (and its various benefits within colonies) is adaptive for honey-bees, they are essentially challenging Varroa to become less dangerous, for DWV to become less deadly. The honey-bees have opted for a high stability strategy, and force their nectar sources or their parasites to move towards accomodation with them. If flowers adapt to pollination by bees, their floral tubes and nectar concentration will converge on the bee selected optimum. Alternatively in insects, you see rapid speciation as a particular moth adapts to a highly exotic flower. Bees don't engage in that arms race, they force other organisms to move towards them. Will a strain of DWV mutate to become hypovirulent, very possibly, as DWV has extremely high generation turnover.


----------



## rhaldridge (Dec 17, 2012)

JWChesnut said:


> VSH is quantified *not* by die-not die status, but by a assay that kills a group of brood with liquid nitrogen and then quantifies the kill and clean rate and completeness.
> 
> .


There are problems with this sort of indirect measure. The VSH trait alone is apparently not enough to make treatment unnecessary. So far as I know, no VSH breeder makes the claim that their bees will not require treatment. The only large-scale breeder that does make this claim, as far as I know, is BeeWeaver, and their results were achieved via the Bond method.


----------



## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

many thanks for that link jwc. i am operating treatment free, and have not been experiencing frank varroasis, but have had higher than expected queen failure. the article provides me with a possible etiology for that.


----------



## Delta (Jan 23, 2013)

For the people that have see DWV and have not treated what kind of mite loads were you dealing with? How many bees would you see with DWV outside of your hive? I do have a very Darwin approch but I do not like seeing an investment go to waste at the same time. I guess we shall wait and see if the bees can handle a western NY winter.


----------



## JWChesnut (Jul 31, 2013)

You should download and read: 
Molecular and Biological Characterization of Deformed Wing Virus
of Honeybees (Apis mellifera L.) http://jvi.asm.org/content/80/10/4998.full.pdf#page=1&view=FitH

The answer to your question is in the first paragraph:
*Symptomatic adult bees typically appear in the final stages of colony collapse, usually late summer-autumn of the second or third year of uncontrolled varroa mite infestation. Occasionally, a colony may have symptomatic bees in early spring and recover during the summer, only for symptoms to reappear at the end of the year.*

There is a lot of other vital information in that paper (and other recent, freely accessible ones -- perhaps I should prepare a full bibliography). 

DWV is endemic in colonies -- but it is the co-factor of mites (where DWV also reproduces) that cause severe, symptomatic lethal expression. Dead symptomatic, recently hatched bees in the late summer mean the virus load has reached the lethal level. The prescence of the virus in queen ovaries mean the infection becomes chronic during her's and the colonies decline. The infection of the queen should be presumed because you are symptomatic at the season when high virus load has had a chance to spread throughout the colony.

From the same paragraph:
*DWV is normally a weak and insignificant virus that develops slowly, allowing the brood to develop through the pupal stage to 
adulthood (8, 13). It is this low virulence that has made DWV the main virus associated with varroa mite infestations, since more virulent viruses, such as chronic bee paralysis virus, ABPV, KBV, black queen cell virus (BQCV), sacbrood virus (SBV), and slow paralysis virus (SPV), kill the brood too fast for varroa mites to complete their development on the bee pupae and transmit the virus to new hosts (50, 64).*


----------



## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

very interesting jwc.

i had two colonies this year with observed dwv, but they would be atypical based on your previous post.

the first was is a second year colony produced from a nuc last year that overwintered well, but had multiple workers with dwv emerging from the hive on a daily basis from late march to early april which is our pre-main flow build up here. it apperared to clear up on its own and i haven't observed any since. that colony ended up drawing out two additional medium supers of foundation and i was able to harvest 3 supers of honey from it. (i don't believe it swarmed, but i'm not 100% sure). 

the second colony from which i observed dwv was a caught swarm last year from unkown origin, and it also showed the dwv during pre-main flow build up and seemed to clear up on its own. in addition to seeing dwv i also witnessed this colony dragging out drone larvae during that time. this one did swarm and was less productive only drawing one super of comb and giving me one super to harvest. it remains weaker than average at this time.

i will begin taking mite counts this year on all of my colonies, which i will likely do in early september. it will be interesting to see if the loads in these two colonies are higher than the rest.


----------



## JWChesnut (Jul 31, 2013)

Square Peg -
I see a similar pattern in early build-up-- a particular hive will have hundreds of DWV lethals in April -- only to apparently resolve. My abrupt Varroa peak comes in late August-September, just before drone-ejection day. DWV will reappear in some hives at this peak. Fall DWV hives are unlikely to survive the winter. Typically a particular hive is far more affected than any others in the yard.
I have two trajectories for these spring hives -- 
1. I break the colonies down and requeen them into nucs.
2. I permit them to continue, but mark the queen (normally my queens are not marked).

I find colonies that supersede generally resolve, and the DWV retreats to background levels. Colonies where the queen sustains are likely to re-exhibit the DWV peak in September. Previously, I have attributed the June brood -break (part of supersedure) with controlling mite levels, but I am also wondering if transmission from chronically infected queen to eggs (well established, see papers on "vertical transmission" http://jgv.sgmjournals.org/content/88/8/2329.full.pdf#page=1&view=FitH ) is the syndrome that brings DWV back into play in August in the queen resident hives versus hives with a fresh relatively un-affected queens.

The Dave Cushman site has a fascinating account of traditional beekeepers breaking a leg on the queen to force supersedure. I haven't seen or heard of this practice elsewhere, but "freshening" a hive by requeening seems to be part of traditional beekeeping that is coming back into full force. The multi-thousand colony industrial scale keepers in my region requeen in April-May in total and completely, and requeen in August into splits.

There is a Chinese paper on parasites on A. cernua in China with DNA-Mitochondria based gene trees of DWV. Interestingly, the DWV in China appears to North American in origin. (need to dig out that ref).

The nucs don't seem to be any more or less likely to exhibit DWV than non-acute colonies.


----------



## rhaldridge (Dec 17, 2012)

The trouble with this sort of absolutist advice is that it does not take into account those beekeepers who do not treat for mites, and whose colonies somehow manage to remain healthy. 

I just read an interesting piece by Les Crowder, the New Mexico top bar guru, in the July Bee Culture. He has not treated for mites since 1995, and they are not a problem for him. There are many others.

A scientist in any other hard science field, upon encountering a single example that does not conform to his theory, would immediately be forced to modify or abandon that theory. Bee scientists are apparently a different class of scientist. I really can't understand how they can continue to ignore the existence of beekeepers who do not treat, and whose bees thrive... and still call themselves scientists.

As a beginner, I was in a panic when, a week after I'd installed my first nuc, I found a couple bees with DWV. Many were the dire predictions I received, among them being that DWV so early in the season was a death warrant. Well, I won't be astonished if they do collapse at some point. They are locally adapted bees, but came from a beekeeper who treats, so there's no telling if they have any mite resistance. But they have really done well over the summer, and shown no more DWV. I've already made several splits from them, so if they do die, I will be able to handle it. The queen in that hive is incredible, still laying up brood wall to wall; she shows no sign of ovary problems.









I have to agree with Beregondo; the only way to get treatment free bees is to not treat.


----------



## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

very good stuff jwc, many thanks again for your posts.

looks like I've got some good winter reading ahead of me. 

i'm only a few years into this, but i was able to start queen rearing this year, and i have several nucs with queen daughters from one of by best colonies in the wings to use to replace or requeen any that get into trouble.

since few if any treatment free beekeepers take mite counts, i don't have a good feel for what levels of infestation are tolerated and don't have any benchmarks as to when requeening makes sense.

as a sideliner who is trying to show a profit from honey sales and has aspirations to sell nucs and queens it is important to me to try to do better than just survival.

since the bees i am using come from stock that has been treatment free for 16 years i am looking to fine tune management practices that allow my apiary to be productive off treatments.

so far so good, thanks again for contributing here.


----------



## JWChesnut (Jul 31, 2013)

R. Haldrige, you miss my salient point. 
"The only way to get treatment free bees is to not treat" is a mantra, but is not biologically true. Darwinian selection doesn't operate on the backyard scale. 

Bees are adapting to Varroa at the population level. Directed breeding (and importation of co-evolved broodstock) is improving survival at the colony level.

In an obligate out-crossing species with promiscuous mating and broad distribution, a small-time beekeeper is not affecting the population genetics. This is the principal of genetic swamping. You need **isolation or saturation** to change the population genotype with wild out-crossing. 

It appears the African adaptations to Varroa are entering the North American genotype. Locally these include mite-leg chewing and rapid colony swarming. The African adaptions are accompanied with unfavorable traits (ahem), so there are genuine sacrifices involved. I don't know if genetic markers have been collected for the various celebrated treatment-free bloodlines- perhaps M. Bush will comment (if these studies are occurring they are not published as of yet). I also have no idea if the concept of "local survivors" have been screened genetically. Local survivor / locally adapted races may or may not have any genuine existence -- as far as I can tell they are an inductive construct-- folks believe they should exist, so postulate them. Mr. Crowder is on record promoting both local bees and Russian queens, which of course is contradictory.

I can detect we are talking past each other, so I am signing off the thread after this post.


----------



## rhaldridge (Dec 17, 2012)

JWChesnut said:


> I also have no idea if the concept of "local survivors" have been screened genetically. Local survivor / locally adapted races may or may not have any genuine existence -- as far as I can tell they are an inductive construct-- folks believe they should exist, so postulate them. Mr. Crowder is on record promoting both local bees and Russian queens, which of course is contradictory.


And yet, he doesn't treat and his bees don't die at a rate greater than treated bees. And I don't really see the contradiction you postulate, unless you are assuming that no locally adapted bees would ever thrive outside of a specific location, an assumption that is absurd, considering that European honey bees are not even native to this continent. Additionally, there's lots of evidence that local adaptation is not simply an "inductive construct." To believe that, one would have to believe that all bees fare equally well in all climatic conditions, which is a bit much for me to swallow. And in fact it is glaringly obvious that certain lines of bees do poorly in conditions that they are not adapted to: the mortality of southern packages in northern yards is one example.

I've puzzled over the unwillingness of bee scientists to accept that there are in fact bees that survive without treatment, and I really can't understand it. One would think that explaining this phenomenon would be the number one priority, if they were really interested in bee survival. But I haven't been able to find any research directed at these survivors, apart from Seeley's study of Arnot Forest survivors. He attributed their survival to isolation, since they did not survive when installed on conventional foundation and housed in conventional apiaries. It struck me on reading the study that isolation was not the only conceivable explanation. Most of the other research has been directed at what may or may not be pieces of the puzzle, such as small cell bees. These latter studies have enormous methodological holes, or at least this is true of the ones I've seen. No one goes to Michael Bush's yards, or Les Crowder's yards, or to any of the other examples of survivor bees to be found. As far as I know, no one has promoted a serious scientific study of the bees being sold by BeeWeaver, and yet there are many folks who use these bees in treatment free operations.

In my opinion, scientists who prefer to ignore inconvenient facts should probably turn in their scientist badges.


----------



## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

JWChesnut said:


> I can detect we are talking past each other, so I am signing off the thread after this post.


Don't blame you at all a very understandable decision. However, one favour?



JWChesnut said:


> The Dave Cushman site has a fascinating account of traditional beekeepers breaking a leg on the queen to force supersedure.


Have not heard of this technique but would be very keen to read about it but cannot find the link, could you supply the link?

I've always believed natural supersedure is preferable to introducing queens, long as there are enough decent drones in the area.


----------



## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

> I don't know if genetic markers have been collected for the various celebrated treatment-free bloodlines- perhaps M. Bush will comment (if these studies are occurring they are not published as of yet).

None of the scientists have shown any real interest in treatment free beekeepers. They apparently think we are just like they think the feral bees are, we don't exist.

> I also have no idea if the concept of "local survivors" have been screened genetically. Local survivor / locally adapted races may or may not have any genuine existence -- as far as I can tell they are an inductive construct-- folks believe they should exist, so postulate them.

There is much more evidence than people's imagination. They live for years in the same place and they are obvious by their size. Bees that have been in the wild a long time are very small compared to domestic "large cell" bees. Many of us have been collecting feral bees for decades while the scientist insist they don't exist.

> Mr. Crowder is on record promoting both local bees and Russian queens, which of course is contradictory.

How in the world do you conclude that this is contradictory? Some people have time to collect swarms and do trapouts. Some people don't. I always recommend local bees, but many people don't have the resources to get them. What do you recommend to them? You're saying you can't recommend different things for different circumstances without contradicting yourself?

"Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth." --Blaise Pascal


----------



## Solomon Parker (Dec 21, 2002)

Delta said:


> I would like to stay as treatment free as possible but what do you guys do when confronted with deformed wing virus. I have a very lite case of it, I see one bee once and a while and I check the outside of the hive multiple times a day.


I see a few, I ignore them.


----------



## JWChesnut (Jul 31, 2013)

Michael,
I would write the various labs and ask them to screen your selected colonies for genetics. I am *positive* one of the research group would include a sample. Genetic screening occurs at varying levels and intensity -- but the simple step of characterizing the mitochondria race (which is done in bulk to "certify" the Russian line) would determine if the proportions of lineages are different from that found in background feral bees. To prepare genetic trees an "out-group" is needed, and a highly selected line might represent an useful out-group to any other study.

The "contradictory" statement seems a lightning rod. What I am trying to say is: It is assumed that "survivor bees" have fixed a beneficial expression and particular genotype through a severe genetic bottleneck as the countryside was depopulated and repopulated by the few lineages that survived. It is often said that these local survivors have instinctual knowledge of the yearly calendar, forage, and hive size adjustments. It is established that the far-eastern Siberian race has adaptions to Varroa through multi-generational contact. If bee traits are "additive" then a genotype blend of Local x Russian hybrids would preserve best traits of each. 
The issue is that in most wild crosses and in subsequent generations traits are suppressed, as the genotype reverts. Russian x Local would dilute "local" expression and dilute "Russian" expression. 
In bee mating this dilution happens quickly because a mother queen populates new hives with F2 (double hybrid) workers. The mother raises daughters with a resorted and motley collection of half her genes, the daughter raises workers with a motley collection of about one-quarter of the grandmother's genes. Selection for varroa traits impacts survival of these F2 workers (as a colony organism) chiefly. This would be similar to selection in dogs where the puppies of the daughters determine mating value of the grand-mother. Survival of bee super-organisms essentially skip a generation at each colony division. 

The "Starline" hybrids and the certified "Russian" breeding system acknowledge the F2 character of bee breeding. The Russian system rotates drone lines through the cooperators, so in the 2nd year crosses of daughters are always with out-groups. The Starline hybrid had a odd-even year alternation with breeding groups. The original Buckfast bees were F2 from other lines added continually. The subsequent "buckfast" derived lineage were notorious for un-even expression of temprament (mean as heck) -- and illustrate the principal of reversion. 

Small apiaries in suburban backyard settings are not going to maintain "survivor" lines -- the bees will revert to background norm through promiscuous outbreeding. The norm may represent commercial genotype in an area with many larger apiaries, or may repesent a feral stock.

Moderate sized apiaries (less than 30 mature colonies) that are *isolated* are going to in-breed. In breeding for a species that is naturally outcrossing, multi-generational inbreeding is a problem. These apiaries should confederate and plan on a drone hive circulation plan (a la the Russian group) if they are serious about maintaining healthy lineage.

Circulation of drone hives represent a huge selective opportunity. In plants their is strong selective pressure on the haploid unit (pollen grains). These are organisms just like drones, they germinate and grow downward through the stigma tissue to contact the plant's ovule. Germination failure is a selective screen. By having an exclusive drone hive (i.e. daughters are not promoted), drones that are Varroa subseptible are deleted. The selection for drone traits is thus independent of colony-survival traits (which may be very different).

The inertia of species (after all these are stable constructs) is such that directed breeding (and in the wild, isolated founder events) move adaptation far more rapidly than undirected approach.


----------



## rhaldridge (Dec 17, 2012)

JWChesnut said:


> Small apiaries in suburban backyard settings are not going to maintain "survivor" lines -- the bees will revert to background norm through promiscuous outbreeding. The norm may represent commercial genotype in an area with many larger apiaries, or may repesent a feral stock.


This seems reasonable to me, and may account for failures in achieving treatment-free apiaries by beekeepers whose skills are no worse than others who succeed.

However... many of your remarks seem to involve the assumption that it is genetics *alone* that determine the success or failure of an apiary. I think this neglects the possibility that treatment weakens hives in ways that eventually result in the demise of the colony. Bees that might be marginally able to survive and produce in the absence of treatment may not be able to survive the various insults dealt the colony by aggressive treatment. It seems that if you treat, in many ways, you are simply delaying the inevitable, since those who treat are also suffering heavy losses.

Even with bees which have little natural resistance to mites, one can take a pretty good stab at keeping live bees in one's apiary, by aggressively splitting healthy hives. Some commercial operations that are suffering very heavy losses are either expending major capital to replace those losses, or also aggressively splitting hives to make up those losses.


----------



## Solarbeez (Apr 20, 2012)

Michael Bush said:


> > but what do you guys do when confronted with deformed wing virus.
> 
> I occasionally see a bee with deformed wings. I ignore them. I never see a lot of them. DWV was around long before Varroa. Varroa just spread it faster. In the end it comes back down to: the only way to breed bees that can survive without treatments is to stop treating.


This is exactly what I believe. I like the idea of the bees adapting to the situation with little (if any) human intervention. 
My log hive (which came from a living Myrtlewood tree hive) experienced six swarms this year, mostly in April. After those swarms I saw the pupa and newly hatched drones being tossed out. These drones clearly had wings that were not right, but I never saw any mites on any of the bees.
Here are some pics and a video of the drones as well as the hive 'coming back.'
http://solarbeez.com/2013/08/11/bee-beard-log-hive-alive-and-well/


----------



## Solomon Parker (Dec 21, 2002)

Solarbeez, did you carve that? That's a pretty sweet log hive, fantastic conversation piece.


----------



## Solarbeez (Apr 20, 2012)

Solomon Parker said:


> Solarbeez, did you carve that? That's a pretty sweet log hive, fantastic conversation piece.


I can't take credit for the carving. I had carved out the inside of the log when I got the notion to put a face on it. My wife suggested the new chainsaw carver in town. Here is the video showing the chainsaw artist at work. It also shows how the hat pivots to provide access to the quilt box in the top of the hive.
http://solarbeez.com/2012/02/11/the-making-of-a-log-beehive/
The log hive is an experiment in treatment-free beekeeping. I'm hoping the bees will get smaller and smaller each year. I've never used any foundation. About the only human intervention is me looking through the observation window, which btw has a 'leak' in it. Bees on MY side of the glass as well.


----------



## Tom Davidson (Mar 20, 2012)

Has anyone seen a queen with DWV, and if so would requeening be necessary (since, once mated and only when swarming she doesn't fly)? Also, has anyone seen a queen with a varroa on her? I haven't ... on tons of bees but not on the queen. I'm all for local bees, but when pushed for time (no time to raise my own), I buy from a local source or Russians from my state. My experience is while testy on occasion, the Russians truly withstood high mite loads (over 200 in a 24-hour period). The queen shuts down laying and breaks the brood cycle until the levels are back to tolerable, is what one old-timer advised me. Seeing it happen, I'm a believer. But when I can I'll raise my own and hope to get a swarm every now and then.


----------



## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Yes to both, re the DWV on a queen I have found several virgins with what appears to be DWV. You never quite know though, because when moving the cells, if one of the queens is a bit slow and not properly developed when you move the cell, her wings can be damaged and end up looking like DWV, but it's not.

However lab testing has shown queens get the DWV virus in their adult life.

And yes, I do hive inspection and quite often see hives dying of mites, a mite on a queen is not uncommon in these situations. Also, with my own bees, I sometimes end up with more queen cells than I can use, so sometimes chop them open just to see how well they were raised, royal jelly levels, etc. One of those times I found a solitary varroa mite in the cell with the queen larva. The larva was small, and had developed more slowly it was at the pink eye stage. I could find no mite eggs or any evidence the mite had attempted to breed.


----------



## deejaycee (Apr 30, 2008)

Oldtimer said:


> Have not heard of this technique but would be very keen to read about it but cannot find the link, could you supply the link?
> 
> I've always believed natural supersedure is preferable to introducing queens, long as there are enough decent drones in the area.


This one? http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/legpulling.html


----------



## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Nice one Deejaycee, that is the one.


----------



## Che Guebuddha (Feb 4, 2012)

Im not sure if anyone mentioned this;

Shriveled wings are not always an indicator of Varroa created issues. Apparently Chilled Brood can also cause deformed wings;
http://www.biobees.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15104&highlight=deformed+wing+virus


----------

