Lots of dead bees on OMF

[Swarm]

Sorry to hear the outcome, it's horrible. You will often find a stricken colony right alongside perfectly healthy ones. The colony appears to recover only for deaths to reoccur, almost in waves.
Sweep the dead up as they will smell really bad.

 

[pargyle]

Sorry to hear the outcome, it's horrible. You will often find a stricken colony right alongside perfectly healthy ones. The colony appears to recover only for deaths to reoccur, almost in waves.
Sweep the dead up as they will smell really bad.

Well Steve, you were spot on with your prediction that it might be CBPV .. a good call when the only symptoms were some dead bees on the floor of the hive. It's usually when you see them shaking or dancing around that you start to worry.

There is some evidence that stressed colonies are more susceptible to CBPV and Emily has been doing a lot of manipulations lately .. not that she could have done anything else anyway.

Rough luck. In her situation I would kill what's left of the colony, strip the wax from the frames and render it and boil or burn the frames, flame the boxes and hope it does not spread to the rest of her colonies. There's no cure for it and the risk is that it gets passed on.

 

[Fritillary]

In my (small) experience so far it doesn't look like stress but genetics - unless having a too prolific queen in itself stresses the colony - because the faster and more the queen lays, the faster they go down. One did come through last year and is still going. Other colonies apparently completely unaffected.

 

[Swarm]

Probably a lot to do with our demands for a super bee. We make far too many demands, IMO and when those demands become too great a burden, we reap what we sow.
Dani has already mentioned the connection.

 

[pargyle]

I have given them as much space as I can. I made a split over the weekend, which reduced the population slightly. The hive also has two supers on. I don't have another brood box to add on though.

So - Do you now have the original colony with CBPV and a split that may also have CBPV ?

You may have now two colonies with CBPV ..Are you leaving the split to build their own queen or are you introducing a new queen into the split ? It's probably too late to do much about it now but I certainly would not put a £40 queen into a colony that, potentially, is diseased with a virus that is known to spread.

This is not your fault .. beekeeping is full of these glitches and we don't entirely understand a lot of these condiitons. There is only limited research done and as hobby beekeepers we can only rely sometimes on 'what seems to have worked' in other cases.

As Dani said - it's a real bummer for you.

 

[beeno]

I lost two colonies to CBPV last year. One colony never thrived and went down with it and died. Another very strong colony got it after a cold spell last spring supposedly recovered and then it reappeared so I killed the colony as I was concerned about it spreading further. It is very infectious so I will despatch as a matter of course in future. I don't think it is anything to do with the beekeeper it is as with many human viruses one year it is prevalent and other years very few cases. So far so good this year.

 

[E&MBees]

Thanks for all the advice.

To clarify, the split in the nuc has the queen, the hive is queen less as it had charged QC.

Is there a consensus that both colonies should be destroyed? If that is the over riding opinion, how is it done humanely? I do not want them to suffer.

I understand that the hive and frames need to be deep cleaned. Boiled or scorched as they are wood.

I have a number of questions:

1) How do you deep clean a poly nuc?
2) Can I extract and use the honey in the supers for human consumption?
3) Can I extract and render the wax and then use it or is it better to exchange it?
4) I have contacted my seasonal bee inspector, should I wait to hear from her first?
5) I have a colony of black bees also which I got last week as a swarm. They are separate from the other ginger ones. Do I watch and wait with them?

Many thanks,
Emily

 

[Erichalfbee]

what I would do

Thanks for all the advice.

To clarify, the split in the nuc has the queen, the hive is queen less as it had charged QC.

Is there a consensus that both colonies should be destroyed? If that is the over riding opinion, how is it done humanely? I do not want them to suffer.
i would spare the as yet unaffected colony and Keep a watching brief
I understand that the hive and frames need to be deep cleaned. Boiled or scorched as they are wood.
Boiled but is it worth it? Frames are cheap enough

I have a number of questions:

1) How do you deep clean a poly nuc?
hot washing soda scrub followed by a spray with bleach or cilia bang bleach and hygiene

2) Can I extract and use the honey in the supers for human consumption?
yes
3) Can I extract and render the wax and then use it or is it better to exchange it?
Use it
4) I have contacted my seasonal bee inspector, should I wait to hear from her first?
5) I have a colony of black bees also which I got last week as a swarm. They are separate from the other ginger ones. Do I watch and wait with them?
They will likely be ok

Many thanks,
Emily

 

[E&MBees]

what I would do

Thanks Dani,

Just to clarify, you would watch and wait with both of the ginger colonies (nuc and hive) affected by CBPV? Or did you mean destroy the CBPV ones, and watch and wait with the black bees?

Sorry, I don't want to make hasty decisions and regret it, but also don't want to risk the black bees getting it and anyone else's in the neighbourhood.

Should I wait for the bee inspector?

 

[Erichalfbee]

I had CBPV in the apiary four years ago when I had 16 colonies all in a row. Only one colony was affected. Nothing at all happened with the others.
I left the colony to it but when it was clear they had dwindled to a supers worth of bees I killed them with soapy water.
I wouldn’t kill the colony with the original queen and I certainly wouldn’t touch the swarm.
Up to you with the affected bees. Maybe see what SBI says?

 

[Erichalfbee]

Probably a lot to do with our demands for a super bee. We make far too many demands, IMO and when those demands become too great a burden, we reap what we sow.
Dani has already mentioned the connection.

I am beginning to understand that is exactly the problem

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

As Dani
Frames are cheap enough if you buy packs of 50 second quality (Maisie's sale end of this month) just scorch the boxes and floor. Poly boxes can be cleaned by submerging them in a 0.5% sodium hypochlorite (found in household bleach) solution for twenty minutes
Have a look on the Beebase pages for details on how to sterilize poly boxes. It's in the Advisory leaflets section - 'Hive cleaning and sterilisation'
There is no legislative obligation on you to inform, or wait direction from your SBI when it comes to CBPV

 

[pargyle]

I had CBPV in the apiary four years ago when I had 16 colonies all in a row. Only one colony was affected. Nothing at all happened with the others.
I left the colony to it but when it was clear they had dwindled to a supers worth of bees I killed them with soapy water.
I wouldn’t kill the colony with the original queen and I certainly wouldn’t touch the swarm.
Up to you with the affected bees. Maybe see what SBI says?

I'd agree with that ... the queenless one with obvious signs of CBPV is probably doomed anyway .. best to let them go .. spray them with soapy water. It's an awful thing to have to do but they are likely to dwindle away anyway.

You will need to keep a close eye on the Nuc with the queen as the chances are they may well be infected. Try and avoid opening them up - you might rig up a landing board against the entrance so you can look at them on the landing board and you will see if there are infected bees and you will also see if they are throwing out any dead bees. Saves opening them up.

Your beekeeping journey has had a very steep learning curve hasn't it ?

 

[E&MBees]

As Dani
Frames are cheap enough if you buy packs of 50 second quality (Maisie's sale end of this month) just scorch the boxes and floor. Poly boxes can be cleaned by submerging them in a 0.5% sodium hypochlorite (found in household bleach) solution for twenty minutes
Have a look on the Beebase pages for details on how to sterilize poly boxes. It's in the Advisory leaflets section - 'Hive cleaning and sterilisation'
There is no legislative obligation on you to inform, or wait direction from your SBI when it comes to CBPV

As an experienced bee keeper, would you destroy the affected colonies?

If so, how? I don't want them to suffer, or to fly and infect my other, hopefully healthy colony.

 

[Swarm]

Thanks for all the advice.

To clarify, the split in the nuc has the queen, the hive is queen less as it had charged QC.

Is there a consensus that both colonies should be destroyed? If that is the over riding opinion, how is it done humanely? I do not want them to suffer.

I understand that the hive and frames need to be deep cleaned. Boiled or scorched as they are wood.

I have a number of questions:

1) How do you deep clean a poly nuc?
2) Can I extract and use the honey in the supers for human consumption?
3) Can I extract and render the wax and then use it or is it better to exchange it?
4) I have contacted my seasonal bee inspector, should I wait to hear from her first?
5) I have a colony of black bees also which I got last week as a swarm. They are separate from the other ginger ones. Do I watch and wait with them?

Many thanks,
Emily

Hello Emily,
I discussed CBPV with a well known bee farmer who had tried all manner of variations and the consensus was it seems colony related rather than infected combs. Whether sterilised or not, there was no pattern observed by transferring combs, it would strike one colony while the one a few inches away carried on unaffected.
Never a nice subject but by far the most humane culling method is a soapy water bath and/or spray. It's about as instant as you can get.
I'm sure your others will be fine.

 

[E&MBees]

I'd agree with that ... the queenless one with obvious signs of CBPV is probably doomed anyway .. best to let them go .. spray them with soapy water. It's an awful thing to have to do but they are likely to dwindle away anyway.

You will need to keep a close eye on the Nuc with the queen as the chances are they may well be infected. Try and avoid opening them up - you might rig up a landing board against the entrance so you can look at them on the landing board and you will see if there are infected bees and you will also see if they are throwing out any dead bees. Saves opening them up.

Your beekeeping journey has had a very steep learning curve hasn't it ?

Never expected it to be this hard, or sad to be honest. Not going to stop though. I've experienced many challenges in my lifetime and I'm not one to give up easily!!

I have been looking at the dead bees coming out of the nuc. Fairly certain they have it too.

The hive with it is still fairly full. Would soapy water be sufficient. Do I just pour a bucket over it.

 

[E&MBees]

I had CBPV in the apiary four years ago when I had 16 colonies all in a row. Only one colony was affected. Nothing at all happened with the others.
I left the colony to it but when it was clear they had dwindled to a supers worth of bees I killed them with soapy water.
I wouldn’t kill the colony with the original queen and I certainly wouldn’t touch the swarm.
Up to you with the affected bees. Maybe see what SBI says?

Ok, thanks Dani.

 

[pargyle]

A garden sprayer or one of those pump action sprayers. 10% washing up liquid to 90% water is sufficient. It is fairly quick as it basically suffocates them as the water blocks their spiracles. If there are a lot of bees you might find that they get a bit excited so make sure you are well suited up. If you do a frame at a time and have a box or something in whch to put the frames in after you have sprayed the bees. If there's a flap on the top you can shut it down as you go.

 

[E&MBees]

Cbpv

Getting more and more confused and worried!

Should I be giving them a second chance and waiting to see if they can recover, or are the risks too great to the other healthy hive. I contacted my local teaching apiary, they asked if it could be poisoning. If it was that, surely the other healthy hive would be affected too.

From the pictures that I posted, are the experienced forum members fairly certain that it is CBPV? I don't want to get it wrong as I haven't had an experienced keeper look at the colony.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Don’t ask anybody who is not familiar with the disease to give you an opinion. Have the beekeepers from your teaching Apiary ever seen CBPV?