>And which are those main factors?
From looking at bee kills in my area.
The stress factor at the colony level from
mites appears to be minor, and relegated
to a lessor contributor, as opposed to
a major contributor in colony mortality.
This, observation **IN MY AREA**
High Factors which I've seen contribute to
greatly in colony mortality are dearth, AFB,
EFB and some other miladies, excess moisture,
starvation, failing queens, etc.
During the shift when varroa was no longer
a main factor in colony death, I began to see
colonies survive further into winter and spring,
perhaps succumbing to 'lateral isolation starvation'
or 'solar isolation starvation', 'freeze starvation',
which, in my opinion, was an encouraging sign, suggesting
varroa related stresses beginning to play a minor
contributing role, and not a major role. During these
few years, we happened also to be plagued by very strange
and sudden onsets early of dearth, so I placed a bit more
weight on dearth as a main stress factor than I normally
would have. -But things are looking good the past season
and this season, being the best in a long time.
Indecently, I've been interested in types of starvation,
since discovering a mature colony which succumbed
to what is described as 'rapid depletion of inferior
stores', which, on its face, was very symptomatic of
what most beekeepers would call 'froze starve', -having
an abundance of capped stores just above. But clearly,
this was not a froze starve case, but more suggestive of
a case of rapid catastrophic depletion of inferior stores,
causing a sudden lack of fuel to generate sufficient heat to
transition to new stores. This, death a -fuel problem,
rather than a cluster size problem which tends to be
the main contributor in most cases of 'froze starve'.
Best Wishes,
Joe Waggle
***********************************************
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
Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at:
http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm
|
