# still drones and now some DWV?



## rob6118 (Jul 26, 2014)

In early September I inspected my hives to start preparing for winter and was surprised that despite only harvesting a single deep frame my hives were practically empty after a couple weeks of hot dry weather. I verified that all were queen right but one hive which I know superceded earlier in the year had a very high number of drones. I was worried about the queen especially as my other hives had all evicted their drones at the start of the hot weather end of july, but I found 2-3 frames with solid brood pattern, with 2-3 frames of drone (total) on either side. Since I had a solid pattern I chalked it up to it being the strongest hive with the most honey 12 frames total with 1 full frame of honey. I immediately started feeding all hives via top feeders.

I looked today again to top up the feeders (now 50kg in for 5 hives). All hives have good activity, lots of pollen coming, and still some wasp activity. but the same hive still had 2 drones hanging out front and when I took a closer look I also counted 4 bees in front with DWV and another 2-3 in the rest of the apiary.

I searched but I couldn't find anyone with the same high drone load this late in the season who also still had a good brood pattern in the center? Is it possibly just normal? I am foundationless.

I am still trying the TF path and conscious that mite loads will be the highest at this time of year. How much DWV is too much? I will inspect tomorrow to confirm amount of capped stores, brood, and pattern. Is a handful of DWV outside the hive insignificant / normal if no other adverse symptoms?

I did splits on my other hives this year but not the 12 frame due to the supercedure giving them a brood break and slight delay.


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## WillH (Jun 25, 2010)

rob6118 said:


> How much DWV is too much? QUOTE]
> 
> 1. If I see a single bee in a hive I panic.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

i had a little 'spurt' of devitalized drone pupae/larvae being hauled out along with a very small number of workers having deformed wings crawling on the ground which lasted about a week. that has stopped now. it seems that these diseased (mostly drone) brood were associated with the first round or two of the fall brooding of overwintering bees. i guess this is hygienic behavior and maybe some mites got removed in the process or at least were kept from reproducing.

i looked at some brood frames in the two hives that had the most dead brood hauled out and found lots of worker brood with solid patterns that had a small percentage of the capped brood being uncapped and removed. i'm hoping this small percentage means that the impact from the mites/viruses will be minimal on the colonies' ability to rear a strong enough winter cluster. mite counts on these two hives were 7.3% and 8.5%.

i know this doesn't answer your question directly, but i believe seeing solid patterns of healthy brood would trump seeing an occasional diseased bee. it sounds like nutrition may be a bigger concern in getting your colonies up to wintering strength, and that you have taken the appropriate corrective action. you may want to consider protein supplementation as well. future inspections should tell the tale as to whether or not your colonies are gaining or losing ground. 

thanks for the report, please keep us posted.


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