Bob Said:

Interesting the different behavior of varroa when resistance starts. I
appreciate Medhat taking his time to explain his observations!


Observations:

1. Colony population is getting small and in stress conditions
2.  colony sounds like queenless, but the sound is not as loud as in
normal case of queen less.
3. colony cluster is disrupted and becomes fragile, bees are  walking all
over the place as if they are walking on fire wiggling their body.
4. if you examine the brood nest closely, you will find no emergency queen
cells and  eggs. You may find the queen on one of the combs by herself. In
most cases, you do not find the queen..
5. When we provided the queenless colony with frame of eggs and young
larvae to encourage them to raise emergency queen cells, the colony failed
to produce queen cells.
6. When we removed 4-5 frames from the brood chamber and replace them with
4-5 frames of brood with a queen from a good colony. The colony accepted
the new comers. Then, the removed combs from this hive were taken out for
melting. The donor colony of brood, bees, and queen was fixed by adding
new foundation or  combs and introducing a new queen.

In fact when I observed these symptoms, I asked my student Geoff Wilson
who was visiting me from Ontario to examine some of these colonies. He was
surprised to see what we called at that time sub-lethal toxicity of bees.


Medhat

Medhat Nasr, Ph. D.
Provincial Apiculturist
Pest Risk Management Unit
Crop Diversification Centre North

RR 6, 17507 Fort Road
Edmonton, AB, Canada T5B 4K3
Tel: (780) 415-2314    Fax: (780) 422-6096
Mailto:[log in to unmask]

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