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Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers

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Chronological Thread  
  • From: Randall Austin <ra41717 AT gmail.com>
  • To: George Stevens <geojosteve AT aol.com>
  • Cc: ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] poor hive questions
  • Date: Fri, 09 Aug 2013 21:25:57 -0400

George,

The best thing to do is ask one of our State Bee Inspectors (Don Hopkins or Will Hicks) to have a look. That's what they do... don't worry about inconveniencing them.

I can only take a wild guess at what the problem is. This isn't American Foulbrood (AFB), so anything else is good news compared to that. There aren't many diseases or conditions that kill well-developed pupae. From your description, my first thought was, "that sounds like chilled brood, but obviously that can't be it in August." But Shimanuki & Knox  describe many of the same symptoms for overheating as for chilling:

Overheating
The overheating of brood develops when there is a sudden loss of worker
bees to cool the colony during hot weather. Larvae that died from overheating
become brownish or black and are watery; pupae have a black,
greasy appearance. Newly emerged adult bees may be wingless. Cappings
of brood cells can appear melted, darkened, sunken, and punctured.
Worker bees can overheat if they are confined in their hives during hot
weather without proper ventilation or access to water. Adult bees dying
from overheating crawl about rapidly while fanning their wings. They are
often wet, and their wings appear hazy. In some cases, an abnormally large
accumulation of dead bees may be seen at the hive entrance.

Like with chilling, this could happen if you have too much brood in relation to the number of workers.

There are natural plant toxins, such as from Yellow Jessamine, than can kill pupae in this fashion as well.

Note that pesticides kill foragers, very rarely larvae, and it would be a very poor pesticide indeed if it wasn't lethal until the pupae were well-formed. So that isn't the culprit.

Except for AFB and the viruses associated with parasitic mite syndrome (which this doesn't sound like), most bee maladies clear up by themselves with time, as long as the queen is able to keep up laying and the worker population doesn't fall too much.

But --- if you see more of this, I would definitely call Don Hopkins or Will Hicks and ask them for the real story.

As far as your honey super question: around here, in a good year, we'll get plenty enough fall honey from goldenrod and asters for our bees to overwinter on. But we don't get enough for a fall surplus harvest. So honey supers for surplus isn't anything to think about in the fall.

Randall Austin

On 8/9/2013 5:09 PM, George Stevens wrote:
8D0635BD5FCE934-81C-B134 AT webmail-d163.sysops.aol.com" type="cite">

Randall,

I did not get pictures but they looked like almost fully developed bee pupae
but the abdomen and legs were white and the head and thorax black.  Its legs
were moving so I think it may have been drawn out of the cell prematurely and
expelled. I saw about three of these being flown to the ground by a bees.

I checked the hives today and saw white larva and capped brood in poor hive
and they had eaten over a pound of sugar in last five days.  I didn't go 
through hive any further after seeing brood on two frames in top deep.  Added
more sugar to the hives.

I need to know when a honey super is needed for the late honey flow?  I did
not add supers early enough in June to get the comb drawn out and removed
them when I sensed they were struggling.  I hope to have some honey stores
for the winter in the hives.

George





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