On Tue, 2 Jul 1996, Kriston M. Bruland wrote:
 
> On Jun 28,  2:32pm, Eric Abell wrote:
> > Subject: How to deal with ....
> > First a little background:
> > I am located in Northern Alberta, Canada and we have had 2 weeks of cold
> > rainy weather.  The hives in question were checked 19 days ago and were
> > queen rite.  17 days ago they received the last of 3 treatments of Formic
> > Acid on the bottom board.
> >
> > What I have found - in far too many hives:
> >
> > The upper brood chamber is almost full of honey.
> > The population of bees was great.
> >
> > The bottom brood chamber has capped brood, no open brood or eggs and so no
> > queen.  I have seen Formic acid kills before but this was always accompanied
> > by lots of supersedurre cells.  No queen cells in any of these colonies.
> >
> > This occured in colonies that may have been exposed to Varroa and which were
> > treated with Apistan.
> >
> > An ideas on what is happening or suggestions on how to deal with these
> colonies?
> >
> > My management at this time is:
> > Introduce a queen into the bottom brood chamber, place an empty brood
> > chamber as the second box, excluder, the brood chamber full of honey in #3
> > position and an empty super on top.
> >
> > I have seen similar occurances on the past but only rarely and never thought
> > too much about it.  This time I am finding 2 or 3 in many yards.
>
> We had a very cold, wet, spring in Western Washington, solid rain from March
> through the first part of June.
>
> I had a similar problem in five of my hives.  Lots of honey, pollen, a strong
> population, but no brood whatsoever.  I even found queens in two of the hives.
>
> I requeened last week and haven't opened them yet to see if there are eggs.
>
> About 10 people in my bee association reported similar situations.  Varroa does
> not appear to be the cause.
>
> Does anyone out there have any good ideas about what could cause th
  Hi Kris and All,
  I'm in western washinton also. I did not have the same problem.I was
feeding bees a little all the time thru the rainy period.We did have a
couple problem. One , the rain was dilluting the nectar when the bees
could collect in between rain patches that were going through the area.
The bees were having a hard time in driving out the moisture in the
honey. The nectar was spread around the brood nest and was stopping the
queen from laying her normal pattern. Now with the rain , there were a
few days in a row that the bees could not fly and bring any nectar back
to the hive. That touches off problem two, no new stores coming in and
the queen shuts down. It is a little more complex than just the queen
stopping her egg production. The pheromones from the empty cells is part
of the trigger that gets the queen going and incoming stores. My opinion
, spring build up has more than just one phase to it. The bees start with
winter stores in the hive then shift to incoming stores. If they break
down on the incoming stores , the queen will stop laying.
 What I did to get around the problem was feed and supper. I started 40
2 1/2 packages on April 6th.Mostly drawn comb.One deep for two weeks.Then
I put on the second deep and kept feed on them.I did not fill the feeder
full at any time.( Division board feeder ) Just keep a little feed coming
in all the time. When the Queen had the second box about half full full
of eggs and brood , I put on a 6 5/8 supper on top.  She worked her way
up to the supper and and then I would move her down to one of the deeps
if I saw her at the time I checked , about May 16th.Then I woul put 2
more 6 5/8 suppers on top. We were getting a few days of sun by then. I
had two hives that I had to requeen, they could not keep up with the
other queens. I put on 800 pounds of sugar and what I have now is 4 to 5
suppers on most of the hives and very strong populations. Most of the
hives are sitting on fireweed that has just started and I'm extracting
now so I have room for the fireweed honey.
  I would like to add a point about queens. They are not the same.Queen
behavior and her interactions with the workers , which has a lot to do
with pheromones needs more research. I have my own opinion by observing
bees for the last 30 years.We learn some by observation , but what we see
are symtoms of problems.We need standard measures for quality and need to
understand that we will never know everything about the honeybee. Because
the Good Lord has made the Honeybee so complex , is the reason that it
has been around for so long.We can not make it better. We can select
those traits that we want , for our use of the Honeybee.We all need to
work together to solve problems.This list is a tool. We need to get
subscriptions to the leading beekeeping magazines , so we can stay up
with the latest news about the mites.  Members of this list did
an outstanding job on articles on the mites and if followed will save a
lot of bees for the industry.
Best Regards
  Roy