>My reason for posting this was to see if anyone else is involved in this BeeInformed sampling and what sort of levels they are seeing. I have several >reports but there is no location data attached to them (for anonymity), other than the state (NY). What it looks like to me is that the varroa are under >control but the DWV is through the roof. And yet, no DWV symptoms.

we had access through emails to 4 or 5 bips, from cortland to the canadian border, what you describe is exactly what is being seen, the only person with a bip that is not having a problem had low mite and low DWV.  None of the experienced beekeepers saw any DW bees during the year and pulling apart many deadouts show no deformed wings on any bees. The people that do check for mites had low mite levels around Nov8, we did alcohol washes on many of the deadouts using bees from on top of the inner cover, frames, and if we had to the bottom board.  The mite counts were extremely high, some people had screen bottoms and looking at the pull outs had high amounts of mites on the pull outs.  The bip inspections that we have the information on were done in Sept. with low mite counts.

 Everyone used different treatments on different schedules.  But here is one example. Nuc treated with Apivar(first time using apivar, but positioned correctly, because how could you miss the brood in a nuc), full MAQ in August, OAD on Nov 8, the large apiary next door moved out on Nov 25, no bip report, but the hives died with high mite counts.

 My two yards that crashed, had low mite counts end of Sept., one small apiary crashed some time in Oct. all of Oct and 1/2 of Nov. had bee flying weather, all of the dead hives still have all their honey intact, none robbed out.  I did manage to get enough live bees in a sample to send to BVS, not sure why but they got lost for a few days, but show as arriving yesterday, so we will see if they are any good.

My other yards, with the same treatments, in a different area, where all the beeks treat on a similar schedule, are all fine, and all the other beeks bees are fine, with plenty of stores, and large clusters with no sign of collapse.

 People speculated that the drought caused the pollen to not have enough protein causing poor bees. I checked with Scott at Cornell, he said there would be no quality problem, but could be a quantity problem, He sent a copy of this to Cappy, all the deadouts looked at had plenty of pollen.



 

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