Someone recently asked about the prognosis for chilled queens.
I was just speaking to one of my cooperator beekeepers and got the
following story, which must qualify for an apicultural "believe it or
not".
A beekeeper was shaking the dead bees off the combs of a colony which
had died over winter, to reuse the equipment. As he was moving one of
the frames which had almost no bees on it, he noticed the queen alone on
the face of the comb. He touched her and she moved a leg. He took her
inside and put her on the kitchen table. As she warmed up, she started
walking. He got a queen cage with a few workers and put her in. Next
day, she was active in the cage. He put her with a frame of bees in an
observation hive. She has recovered and has produced worker brood.
It was 3 deg C the morning she was found on the comb.
One queen doesn't make a generality, but I thought you might not have
heard a story like this. (By the way, Nick Wallingford's experience with
stunted wings, which he attributed to overheating, can also occur from
chilling a cell on the last couple of days before emergence. There are
probably others out there with more experience with this (I thought most
queen rearers had experienced it).
Some background to the beekeeper and the chilled queen:
The beekeeper has 55 bee colonies which were found to have Varroa. In
last year's September trials, we tried different treatments for the
varroa, including liquid and gelled formic acid, and Apistan, but didn't
realize til end of Sept, that tracheal mites had increased well beyond
the damage threshold. At the last sampling in October, mite levels were
down in colonies treated with formic, but by the slicing method, bees
with dead mites still show "infested" so we didn't have a very good idea
of the live tracheal mite populations. 12 of the 35 trial colonies died
over winter.
Treatment group Oct % * % winter March %
Tr. mites mortality Tr mites
Apistan 59 56 37
Formic liquid 25 0 2
Control 89 86 32
Formic gel 23 0 19 **
Dust 63 28 *** 74 ***
* % of 50 bees examined per colony (includes some bees with treated
mites)
** this would be 8 %, except for a hive which was beside a hive 96 %
infested in October, from which the bees disappeared over winter. The
surviving hive ended up at 80 % infested, likely because of mites
brought by bees from the dying colony.
*** Since March, an additional 57 % (overall total 86 %) have died or
become non-viable colonies (the queens were rescued, as in the chilled
queen report).
Kerry Clark, Apiculture Specialist
B.C. Ministry of Agriculture
1201 103 Ave
Dawson Creek B.C.
V1G 4J2 CANADA Tel (604) 784-2225 fax (604) 784-2299
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