Howdy All I notice that the hive that swarmed last sunday they are dragging out young bees with chewed wings which tells me they are removing mites but this hive has no queen and the young queen hatched out the other day. Will this help them in keeping the mites down since no no brood is present in the hive my drones are ok they have no signs of deformed wings just only a few workers that are being thrown out. Now since the young queen will be a while laying i just would like to know if this break in the brood cycle will keep the mites down the bees are Minn. Hygenics. Thomas
Hello Thomas, "chewed wings" can be from a few difefrent things. Yes mites are one. But chilled brood, malnutrition, are a couple others. I always wonder about DFW this early in the year. Normally, you do not have that many mites this early in the year. The brood break will help but keep this in mind. If you do have a mite problem, the first series of brood the new queen raises will suck all the waiting mites into the cells. The brood breaks that benefit the most are from those hives that are truly hygienic. The mites will buildup somewhat as they have nowhere to go, and they will overlaod the first thousand cells as they are being capped. Then the hygienic bees will go in and clean them out. So do not be surprised if you see a few more DWV bees in the new brood. It will however level off and should return to a manageable rate.
Hello i only see maybe about three or four bees thats all this is a strong hive and still has plenty of bees i am thinking that it may be due to all of this rain and cool spells that has been with it. I have not seen any mites on the bees but like you said there could be some in there but i hope things get back to normal Thanks Bjorn. Thomas
I'm pretty sure that DWV has been found in about every hive when they actually looked for it. So it only reasons that many things could make the virus pop up or outbreak in individual bees. Stressed bees from poor nutrition, weak genetics, etc. I think just the random odds of a hive raising thousands of new bees at a time, probably means a few will be seen from time to time even though the hive overall is healthy.
My opinion of why [some] young bees have malformed wings; Shakeing & jarring, the brood frame ! The bee larva are shook,moved, etc in their cell this disturbs their natural develpment position. To clear a brood frame I prefer the old brush method, takes longer I know, but. Hey, I've been wrong before ! PCM
