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Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers

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  • From: "Thomas Grizzle" <griz AT mindspring.com>
  • To: <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [ocba] Strange Clinical Signs
  • Date: Tue, 8 Dec 2015 14:12:39 -0500

Hi All,

Last weekend (Saturday) my bee buddy and I treated our hives with oxalic
acid vapors. I have three Langstroths. Today on one of the hives I noticed
several brown smears on the outside of the otherwise white hive. Some were
circular, about 3/8" in diameter, others were runs of about 3-4" long, and
everything in between. I'd say there were about 50 or so marks in total. I
then noticed there were a lot (maybe 100+) of bees in the grass in front of
the hive. This prompted me to go inside and investigate further and I found
nothing out of the ordinary except the population seemed high for December
(perhaps due to warmer weather). There was very little capped brood, and
what was there was across 3 frames in the center and was spotty, not nice
neat packed clusters of brood. So I think the queen got the message to stop
laying (or reduce laying).

I could make up all sorts of wild ideas what these external marks on the
hive might be, but I have one theory that might be reasonable, cockroaches.
I'm wondering if there were roaches in the hive that left after the oxalic
treatment and died on the outside after spilling their guts? Then the bees
out front are just normal "extra" bees that are dying because that's just
what they do this time of year to decrease the population? My other two
hives looked normal, no marks and no bees out front, but I went into them
too and they seemed fine inside too.

Any thoughts from the group?

By the way, we were very happy with the particular oxalic acid device we
settled on. If you would like more information on this please let me know.

Thanks!

Thomas B. Grizzle
919.967.5199






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