>Also happens on blueberries here in Maine. I followed Tony Jadczak for
>several days on blueberries and "EFB' was prevelant.Clears up afeter they
>left blueberries. 

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0227970


Randy sent me this one yesterday,  seems like a great report,  not done wading thru it yet myself,  busy week with bees and boxes.  Spring comes fast it seems.



Most probably don't know but,  we do a lot of watermelon and pumpkins and  there is a watermelon virus that bees can transmit,  as such  we can NOT use bees that have been on watermelons for pumpkins.  So  we send them to cranberries instead,  and then turn them into pumpkin bees when they are done with that job.  Its really the only good option as the numbers are big,  and I don’t have that many honey yards.

Typically we notice that cranberry hives get hit hard.  This last year I actually had one load of 512 we tracked.  The losses by spring were staggering.  The simply are not recovering.  While we did get two turns on the boxes,  I would like to improve those numbers.  That is whats prompting the work,  trying to figure out why they are not recovering.   Part of our issues are queens,  as since our losses have always been high in cranberries,  we only send old queens.   

We also cannot downplay transport stresses.   Moving bees in 90 degree temps is never good,  especially a longer trip of 8 hours.

The downside is I am not keen on dumping new 25$ queens in boxes that are doomed to crash from other problems.  So in the past we have allowed them to requeen, and or dropped cells.      The key question is  why are we seeing the loss?  Is it something in the bees,  or in the comb/pollen.   Typically we have no issues reusing deadouts,  but that’s after a winter,  plenty of time for  comb problems to disapate.  

Which raises another question,  if its bees,  then why does a few rounds of brood/ new queen,  not clean it up?  MIGHT be the combination of cranberries/ pumpkins?  But we don't have the same issues on hives that do pumpkins alone (to the best of my records)

Lots of questions,  trying to improve.

Charles

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