> In mite-surviving honeybee populations, have any of you noticed a "shotgun" type of brood area?   

Hi Mike.

The stock I am working with typically stops brooding through our summer dearth and then resumes brooding again when the late summer and early fall blooms come in.

Out of the 20 or so hives I keep, there are usually about 3 or 4 that will be removing a few devitalized larvae and pupae from the first round or two after resuming brooding.  These removed brood are mostly drone along with an occasional worker.  I’ll also see a rare adult with deformed wings or a crawler about that time.  This will last for a week or two and then stop on it’s own.

I’ve inspected the colonies while that was happening and seen some shotgunning of the brood area that you are referring to, but in later inspections the patterns go back to being full again.  These are the colonies that I obtained the mite counts from revealing infestation rates from 8 - 14%.  These colonies survived winter and came back strong enough to make a good harvest.

I haven’t seen a drone or any drone brood in my hives for well over 2 months now and I assume it is because of the drought.  The colonies have resumed brooding again and so far this year none of them are hauling out devitalized larvae or pupae.  Temperatures are supposed to moderate in about a week or so and my intention is to perform full inspections on all of the hives once it cools off a bit.

Where did your buddy’s bees come from?
             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html