In my area (wintering in British Columbia's lower mainland) mite kill looks like a colony that was otherwise healthy in the fall dwindled to about a cup of bees (few if any dead bees in the colony) by February - March, and froze (ok, I know it's really starved because they got too cold to move to available honey, but froze is just so much easier to say) in the most recent cold snap. Bees may show the symptoms of DWV (stunted bodies, thread wings) or may not, and mite faeces (white debris stuck to the side of the brood cell) are usually abundant (is this a reliable indicator of mite infestation?). An important point, I see these same symptoms if: a) mite treatments weren't completed in the fall, b) mite treatments were ineffective, in the case of a cold fall and poor formic acid evaporation, or c) mite controls were applied to late, as in 100% mite kill with apivar, but applied in November.

Nosema, for me, has seemed to rear its head as a mediocre colony in the early spring, that just won't grow, regardless of what types of supplemental feed, insulation, boosting, are applied.

Cheers- E

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