# Lost all three hives. Diagnosis help needed!



## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

Hi Lauren, sorry to hear about your hives. You must start with suspect number 1 and that is varroa. Did you do any treatments or monitoring of mite numbers? I would suggest closely inspecting the bottom boards for signs of dead mites, it is often hard to see the mites on live bees. In the meantime safely store away your comb in a cool area where rodents can't get into it.


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## guyross (Feb 18, 2011)

I'm a new beekeeper and have never seen mites on dead bees. Since the bee is the mites host my thinking is if there dead there no longer of any use to them. Mites blind sided me in October and I am now seeing the results of weakened bees going into winter. My most affected hives queen is laying as of a week ago when I checked. There was a small number of bees so I gave them a boost with a frame from a strong hive. From a beginners perspective I would monitor more for mites starting in late summer. I didn't but I will this year.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

Unfortunately abnormally high amounts of open brood can be an indication of mite stress. The queen seems to sense there are problems and reacts by laying as much as she can but too often the hive is already in a "death spiral".


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## Solomon Parker (Dec 21, 2002)

Lauren, what are your goals as a beekeeper? You mention a TBH, so I'm imagining you want to do things either treatment-free or with soft treatments. Am I correct?


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## Lauren (Jun 10, 2010)

Thank you all for your responses. I did do a varroa count early in the spring and found nothing. I am trying to be as treatment free as possible. I did not realize that Varroa would cause the Queens to quit laying eggs? I did have a small number on some drone brood mid-season. Since then, I put them on a new screened bottom base with oil drawers underneath. the oil was riddled with wax and chewed caps etc. I found a few SHB and some red ants (in one) but it would have been VERY difficult to see varroa in the soup. I don't have trouble seeing them on the bees themselves, I had a troop of robbers last year that were covered in them. 

Solomon, the TBH was my original goal, but then I found the ease of the standard Lang. worked best for me. One hive was small cell. All of them had foundationless. They drew the foundationless so much better and faster.


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## Solomon Parker (Dec 21, 2002)

How willing are you to try again? And are you willing to adjust your practices a little bit?

I recommend keeping at least five hives if you intend to be treatment-free. There will be losses and with more hives, your chances of losing all of them at one time will be diminished. It is the nature of contemporary beekeeping. At some point, losses should be able to be easily replaced with splits in the spring and you will have sustainability.

Your descriptions of your lost hives remind me of how my losses went while I was achieving sustainability. Often times, the losses cannot be directly tied to mites but may have been affected by some mite stress. You may see hives with small clusters which simply can't make enough heat to keep from freezing solid, or failed supersedures in the fall resulting in a non-viable cluster. Cold starvation where the bees won't move onto honey happens as well.

I don't think you did anything wrong, other than giving away those nucs. Perhaps you should call in a favor and get some splits from those nucs to restart your apiary. I recommend also making some attempts to catch swarms with bait hives. It can be as simple as baiting your current unoccupied hives with lemongrass oil. However, it's like fishing, you won't always catch a fish.

I would not expect varroa to cause a queen to quit laying, however the onset of winter certainly will. You should not expect to find brood between November and now, though some hives will keep brood depending on breed and location. That fact can also help you to ascertain at what point they actually died. Don't be afraid to open the lid and look down into the hive to see if the bees are still alive, it won't hurt them. I do it every couple weeks after dark so I can use a flashlight and be able to see what I'm looking for.


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## wildbeekeeper (Jul 3, 2010)

I would suspect varroa as well. What method did you use to sample for varroa? Its often said that if a new beek doesnt treat in some fashion varroa will kill at hive by year two (or three). of course if you have VSH queens or a resistent race thats not the case as we all know that there are beeks on here who never treat and their hives are fine - but in your case - I would suspect varroa overload and that in turn didnt allow the bees to go into winter as healthy as they could have been. If you havent cleaned out the hive yet, put about 300 bees in a container of alcohol and shake for a minute or two and put them through a strainer or screen so that the bees stay put but the alcohol and nmites fall through.... count the mites and see what you get.... if you are in the double digits then you had mite issues.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

No fair recruiting in the diseases and pests section Sol . I respect Sol and everything that he says is correct including the part about expecting losses. Remember there are some very safe compounds in use that will not taint your honey crop. If you are not ready for the treatment free battle that almost certainly lies ahead I would ask you to at least consider some of the safer products such as Hopguard (Hops), Apiguard (thymol gel), MAQS (formic acid, though some report queen losses), or oxalic acid. I would, however not suggest using Apistan or Checkmite, nasty chemicals those.


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## Solomon Parker (Dec 21, 2002)

Thanks Jim. 

To be fair, the numbers on the MAQS thread are showing queen losses as high as 40%. Each person needs to define for themselves what 'safe' and 'nasty' is.


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## hpm08161947 (May 16, 2009)

Solomon Parker said:


> Thanks Jim.
> 
> To be fair, the numbers on the MAQS thread are showing queen losses as high as 40%.


Yea.. I saw that too.... but at least in my opinion it is way out of line - "From my experience".


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## hpm08161947 (May 16, 2009)

Sol... we sell a fair number of nucs... mostly to newbees and there is indeed a high interest in TF beekeeping. But I have to be honest with them..... from my experience it is a rare thing to see a newbee pull that strategy off with any degree of success. I have certainly seen some skilled hobbyist do it.... so at least IMHO... unless Lauren has a skilled TF mentor... i would never give that kind of advice to newbee.


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## Gypsi (Mar 27, 2011)

I have no answers on why the bees died, but I do have a comment to make on the oil trays I have seen for mite counting under a sbb. and that is that I couldn't monitor mites on a black oil tray.

I bought the high end Country Rubes bottom board last year (and got picked on a lot for spending $40 on it) but it came with a white counting sticky tray. Which, with a bit of oil applied did a nice job of letting me know I had a mite problem.

A couple of weeks ago I visited my local friend and we checked his hive out (too cool to open and go through). His oil tray is black. I couldn't spot mites, shb or anything, and my eyes are better than his. 

While I won't suggest everyone run out and spend $40 plus shipping on the country rubes (although I won't part with mine), I will suggest using a light colored plastic board or sticky sheet for oil catching hive stuff, because mine worked like a charm at keeping me in the know on what was happening in my hive, without disturbing the bees.

And I am sorry for your losses Lauren. Been there, done that. OUCH.

Gypsi


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Varroa are in all our hives. If you tested and didn’t find any, I’d suggest that your testing method is flawed. Varroa sap the life out of our bees. The lost vigor in our colonies manifests in many ways that don’t, at first, appear to make intuitive sense. I can see where a heavily parasitized hive could shutdown brooding. Give your testing method some careful thought. If you don’t know how infested your colonies are, you cannot even begin to guess what the effects are.
If you want to be treatment free, I’ll second Sol’s suggestion that you maintain enough hives to replace your losses each spring.
We've all learned painful lessons. The real test is what you do with those lessons.
Good luck.


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## Lauren (Jun 10, 2010)

When I tested early in the season I used a grid bottom board with sticky oil wiped on it. then I counted after 24 hours. I am sure that they all carry some parasitic load and I am ok with some losses as long as i learn from them. I am an organic gardener and plan to be an organic beekeeper, so don't bust Sol for recruiting. I am already there.  I did not mean to cause a stir by posting in the disease section. I will pull the remainder of the dead ones and try a shake in alcohol to see what I get. Truthfully, I am thankful that you think it may be varroa, since then i can try to manage it. I was worried more with the widespread use of systemic insecticides taking their toll. I can't do anything about those. 

I do have access to two of the hives that I gave away and I will see how they fared. It has been a really hard year around here for bees. Talked to a beekeeper of about 50 years and he said it was the worst year for bees he has ever had. Lots of unexplained losses and no honey to speak of. It is painful to watch all of my winter flowering stuff and know that my girls are missing out. Spring has started way too early here.
PS Gypsi, Mine are made of metal, but with the soup of stuff that ends up in there it is hard for me to count. Maybe if i do a 24 hr it would be much more clear.


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## cdanderson (May 26, 2007)

Lauren, You are very close to me "as the bird flies". It is very possible that you didnt do anything wrong, though I have no experience with TBH. 
In the last, 3 months I have lost more hives than in the previous 5 years. 
Plenty of pollen and honey, queen present maybe a tiny amount of brood. No big mite issues, I did mite counts in late August and treated the hives that needed it with MAQS (no queen problems from that for me). The bees would just be dead on the comb, as if they had froze. We have had a mild winter, much warmer than last year when I lost 0 hives. I will say that my cluster sizes were much smaller than normal going into October. I cant help but blame it on the extreme hot weather we had last summer. An old beekeeper once told me, take care of the bees that take care of the bees that will go into winter. I had some health problems during the hot summer and was not able to feed the girls..maybe I should have. We are not alone, I know another beekeeper who has lost half his colonies this winter with the same hive conditions. It has been a hard year for most beeks near me.


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## Adamd (Apr 18, 2009)

I'm sorry to learn of your loss.

If you saw varroa in drone brood in the summer, then there's a good chance that varroa is the cause. As the season goes into fall, bee numbers reduces and varroa numbers continue to increase getting to the stage of more than 1 varroa per cell. The colony collapses. I do not know what effect SHB has on a colony. Currently we don't have it in the UK at all but they won't help!

You are very vulnerable to problems with a few hives and without huge experience.
If you know there is a varroa problem, it's not cruel to treat a colony - just as you would see a doctor yourself if you were ill or invaded by worms! (sorry to put that picture in your head!). Thymol and Oxalic Acid are both effective and should be considered. To be entirely natural you need to do things like remove drone brood, have brood breaks and the capture the varroa in the first sealed brood after such an event and such-like which makes the job of beekeeping so much harder and it may be better to treat for a year or two whilst you learn the craft. Or at least treat some.

One master beekeeper near me says quite simply to beginners:-

"If you don't treat for varroa your bees WILL die"


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## Benthic (May 1, 2011)

Gypsi said:


> <snip>
> 
> I bought the high end Country Rubes bottom board last year (and got picked on a lot for spending $40 on it) but it came with a white counting sticky tray. Which, with a bit of oil applied did a nice job of letting me know I had a mite problem.
> 
> <snip>


A one-time cost of $40 seems much better to me than buying a new hive/package every year. If you truly think that the bottom board has helped you control your mite issues, then it was a cheap investment. 

Brian


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