AD>And... since the amount of fall feed was only 5 quarts per hive --
  >if I recall, I would disagree with Andy and say that the syrup
  >should not have been the cause of collapse.  It seems to have been
  >the failure of the mite treatment.
 
Yee Gadds Bee Friends did I say that, I got to stop this late niter
posting.
 
I hope not as I have never really found any reliable method of
judging individual beehive health problems without at least a hands
on look, and I try never to do that via the internet, and even with a
hands on look at tens of thousands sick hives that did die if they are
too far gone it is only a educated guess. But I must admit in my own
defence that if the hives were on the verge of collapse from any cause
the extra stress of inverting sugar would be as good a guess as any.
But then all should know I am not convinced that I have ever seen a hive
that died from mites alone, but I will continue to look.
 
Many years ago I was not convinced that all AFB came from bee trees as
most other beekeepers here were quick to blame as most did not have
many close neighboring beekeepers. I looked and looked and in one year
helped remove 35 established hives from one old building and have yet to
find that first bee tree with AFB. I know others have, I may have met
one person in all these years to talk to that had found AFB in a bee
tree but even then it is appears as being really a rare sight and was to
him as he had cut hundreds of trees to find that one over a long history
of years and you would think if that was the main cause of inoculation
of hivebees it would not be so rare. Now I am sure beekeepers no longer
blame AFB on bee trees not because they are all gone but because it is
always their neighbour who is just across the road who must not know how
to take care of his disease that is at fault.
 
I have seen the sugar loss many times in feeding over wintering hives
with AFB they always seem to die, and the one's not fed don't. One of
the advantages to feeding sugar as done here with the inverted gallon
can over the top of the hive is that all sick and week hives can be
identified. They are the one's that will have syrup running out the
entrances the next day. Some times the cans can be removed to save the
remaining sugar for others and the hives checked or marked for help
later. I have run into complete yards of hives that should have not been
fed, but were because the last time the beekeeper was inside the hives
they were in excellent shape but had dramatically declined since. I can
remember one load that I moved that had so much sugar running out the
entrances that as I drove down the highway at night I noticed all the
cars that passed me had there windshield wipers on and it was not
raining, just lucky some highway patrol man was not among them or I
would have been washing police cars at the county farm for thirty days
or so.
 
Well with maybe one exception for that telepathic diagnosis of bee
problems via the net could be the classic American Foul Brood symptoms;
if it stinks, ropes out, has sunken brood caps, and scale it may be
AFB. And it also could have some mites, or many mites just before death,
but I still would not say the mites were the cause of death or that any
prescribed treatment for mites that did not include treatment for the
AFB would have effected the outcome.
 
One thing I can say for sure with confidence is if your bees have varroa
mites and if they get sick for any reason and their is a dramatic
population decline there will be more mites found per sample as the
population declines. You can quote me on that one. I really wanted to
say if they are put under extreme stress, which could be positive or
negative in nature the same thing could result, but that would not be
politically correct so I have been told, but in any case I have never
doubted my fellow beekeeper word when it comes to having problems with
bees or the unexplained death of them because I have seen so many bee
problems in my own travels and the majority of them could not be
explained with the knowledge and tools we have today in the bee yard.
 
The real mite problem as I see it is that our bees have been showing
symptoms of dramatic population declines as long as I have been around
and before that and for sure before any mites could be found and even
today some of these hives that die have few if any mites big or small
when they die. I guess it is natural to say if your bees have lots of
mites and die the mites killed them and maybe they did. It may only be
interesting that this can not be demonstrated by the addition of a known
number of mites to healthy bee hives and have those bees hives die, but
some have said it takes more then one or two seasons which goes against
the science that proscribes that all rats must die at the end of the
experiment in year one.
 
Beekeepers in this area are having problems maybe related to late
summer pesticide treatments on cotton months earlier, and some also seem
to think that the mite problems have declined here and are happy to
continue using the prescribed strips. So far the problem is limited to
two reports from two beekeepers with a total loss (dead or close to it)
of 500 hives. I suspect there are many more. I looked at a sample of the
300 hives reported on in a earlier post and they had no visual signs of
mites and were under mite treatment at the time I looked. In that case
the beekeeper took my advice and moved them into storage the same week
and used the good fall locations for other bees.
 
                           ttul, Andy-
 
 
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