Someone recently asked about the prognosis for chilled queens.
   I was just speaking to one of my cooperator beekeepers and got the
   following story, which must qualify for an apicultural "believe it or
   not".
 
   A beekeeper was shaking the dead bees off the combs of a colony which
   had died over winter, to reuse the equipment. As he was moving one of
   the frames which had almost no bees on it, he noticed the queen alone on
   the face of the comb. He touched her and she moved a leg. He took her
   inside and put her on the kitchen table. As she warmed up, she started
   walking. He got a queen cage with a few workers and put her in. Next
   day, she was active in the cage. He put her with a frame of bees in an
   observation hive. She has recovered and has produced worker brood.
 
   It was 3 deg C the morning she was found on the comb.
 
   One queen doesn't make a generality, but I thought you might not have
   heard a story like this. (By the way, Nick Wallingford's experience with
   stunted wings, which he attributed to overheating, can also occur from
   chilling a cell on the last couple of days before emergence. There are
   probably others out there with more experience with this (I thought most
   queen rearers had experienced it).
 
 
   Some background to the beekeeper and the chilled queen:
 
   The beekeeper has 55 bee colonies which were found to have Varroa. In
   last year's September trials, we tried different treatments for the
   varroa, including liquid and gelled formic acid, and Apistan, but didn't
   realize til end of Sept, that tracheal mites had increased well beyond
   the damage threshold. At the last sampling in October, mite levels were
   down in colonies treated with formic, but by the slicing method, bees
   with dead mites still show "infested" so we didn't have a very good idea
   of the live tracheal mite populations. 12 of the 35 trial colonies died
   over winter.
 
   Treatment group      Oct % *         % winter                March %
                        Tr. mites       mortality               Tr mites
 
   Apistan              59              56                      37
 
   Formic liquid        25              0                       2
 
   Control              89              86                      32
 
   Formic gel           23              0                       19 **
 
   Dust                 63              28 ***                  74 ***
 
 
   * % of 50 bees examined per colony (includes some bees with treated
   mites)
 
   ** this would be 8 %, except for a hive which was beside a hive 96 %
   infested in October, from which the bees disappeared over winter. The
   surviving hive ended up at 80 % infested, likely because of mites
   brought by bees from the dying colony.
 
   *** Since March, an additional 57 %  (overall total 86 %) have died or
   become non-viable colonies (the queens were rescued, as in the chilled
   queen report).
 
 
   Kerry Clark, Apiculture Specialist
   B.C. Ministry of Agriculture
   1201 103 Ave
   Dawson Creek B.C.
        V1G 4J2  CANADA          Tel (604) 784-2225     fax (604) 784-2299
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