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Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers

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Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Starks, Walter" <Walter.Starks AT facilities.unc.edu>
  • To: Cole Rizki <colerizki AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: OCBA Listserv <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] Dead bees?
  • Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2014 18:30:09 +0000

I've seen similar around my hives also. Honestly I just think it's part of the regular life cycle. If your queen lays a thousand eggs a day then you could expect the bees to die at the same rate. As far as the weakening of your hives, have your queens continued to lay but the population is still declining? Or maybe the queens have reduced the number of eggs they are laying because of the dirth? Especially if you haven't been feeding. If you check the hives and don't see many eggs, larvae or capped brood it could be an indication that the queens have decided to reduce the population. From what I have read this is fairly common.

If there are a lot of eggs/brood cells then it may be a problem with chemicals. But it could also be caused by other problems such as Verroa. You should do a sugar shake to check your Verroa levels if you haven't already, just to eliminate that possibility.

______

Walter




Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 8, 2014, at 2:04 PM, "Cole Rizki" <colerizki AT gmail.com> wrote:

Hey all,

I came back from a three week vacation to find literally hundreds of dead bees strewn around my four hives (pictures below of dead bees). I took a look with another bee keeper today who thought someone might have sprayed chemicals nearby. Other bee keepers thought perhaps it was an animal visit to the hives. The bee populations in two of the hives were also very weak whereas before I left for vacation all four hives were very strong. Does anyone have any insight into what might have happened and/or what I should do at this point? We live out in Durham County until this coming Mondaywhen we will move into the city, so there's lots of chemicals being sprayed on crops in a 3 mile radius, so I wouldn't be surprised if this was from chemicals. I appreciate all of your thoughts in advance! 

Thanks,
Cole


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