I have seen hives loaded with mites and loaded with bees with deformed wings.  Those hives had a steady stream of crawlers exiting on nice days.  The open larva looked just fine.  The capped larva might be a little shotgunned but not bad at all.   It seems to me unlikely a virus could infect larva and be causing visible changes or death before the larva is capped due to the very short time period.  That sounds a lot more like a bacteria.  Are there any bacteria known to be transmitted by varroa?

I have seen a fair number of hives that had perfect egg patterns and perfect two day old larva patterns.  But, between two days and time to seal almost every larva simply was gone and very few got sealed.  In some cases I have looked at frame after frame of such brood without being able to see even one abnormal looking larva.  But, if I look long enough I can generally find one that looks odd.  It is laying in the bottom of the cell wrong and is often a very faint yellow color instead of being white.  I have talked to several people from all over the US who were seeing the same type of good egg and young larva pattern and hardly any getting sealed.  In every single case to date treatment with terra has resulted in a good looking sealed brood pattern in seven days after treatment.  In my own hives I have not seen a single relapse if I followed the label on how to treat and retreat.  In several cases EFB was confirmed with the test kit you can buy from the bee suppliers.

Is PMS of young brood real?  Or is it fiction and really a case of EFB?  It seems to me entirely likely that a hive that was sick and weak due to mites might well be set up for an EFB infection.  But, in such a case you need to do two things.  Get the EFB under control and kill the mites.

Dick

HL Mencken said: "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed — and hence clamorous to be led to safety — by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. "

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