Need help reguarding Bee diseases.

[Matthew]

I opened the hive today, noticed a foul smell, seems like quite a few dead bees on hive floor and in between frames in 1 of my hives, aditionally i saw that the hive is still full of honey, the cluster i could see, there was a dotted apearence to the wax all over the hive, the honey in someparts has gone moldy, weird be cause the honey they had collected last year had no feed and was pure and there own. at first i thought it might be nosema but we do not have nosema in this part. and the bees look like they cannot digest the pollen they collected, the hive is covered in un digested pollen, which in it self is weird cause bees tend there businness outside as know.

Grateful of you help.
Cheers.

 

[Poly Hive]

The first thing Matthew, and welcome to the forum though I imagine you had wished for a better first question, is to do a matchstick test on one of these perforated brood cells and see if a string of mucous comes out with the stick.

Just a thin piece of wood will do, and if you have that mucus attached I strongly suspect you have American foul brood.

PH

 

[Mike a]

Welcome Matthew

Hows the weather in Iran?

I was about to suggest you could send a sample of the bees to NBU until I saw where you are located.

 

[Matthew]

thanks for the welcome.
I'll do the match stick test in the morning,,, and put the results on here,,, cheers.

The weather in iran? well thats the trickiest question, here you can get all 4 seasons all year round, but where i'm located the weather is cold, we had a couple of months of snow but now it's warming up, but still at nights the temp drops below zero. day time the sun is just right for the bees to come out around 10-15c, no humidity.

cheers.
P.s: ye no NBU here like you have in England.

 

[Matthew]

I checked for AFB as you said, the match stick test, first of all,,, not much brood, guess cause no pollen yet the queen hasn't started laying, the queen is there, the match stick test came out fine though, i had enough time to clear the hive floor, i'll see how the bees react to that.

Cheers

 

[jameskilty]

Need help regarding bee diseases

Wikipedia has an article on bee diseases with dysentery as one of the items. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diseases_of_the_honey_bee#Dysentery Do you have honeydew honey? Has your winter been cold for months? Good luck.

 

[Matthew]

yes we have had and still have rain and snow for the last couple of months so that hasn't helped. Wow you have been of so much help, well i guess thats is, thank you very much.
one other thing is that no solution has been mentioned, anyone any advice?

Cheers.

 

[jameskilty]

If it is dysentery hopefully they will clean it up once they start flying well. I suppose you can wash the frames by spraying with water. I did that once. Have you looked at the faeces under a microscope to definitely rule out nosema? The wikipedia article suggests if you are prone to this, by having lots of late honeydew, feed syrup so they store the honeydew away from the brood area in a super. Also "it is common for beekeepers to remove all honey from the hives and replace it with sugar water or high fructose corn syrup, which have nearly no indigestible matter." Our problem here is ivy in September-October - that last flow. They can get rather a lot! Then they can be slow to remove it in the spring as it sets solid.

 

[Matthew]

I do not have a microscope, but from what i know, we do not have nosema in this part of the country, but still i'll see if i can get ahold on one. the intresting thing is that i fed them syrup of actual honey and they did not touch it. and the honey they have stored has gone mouldy. i removed the mouldy honey. it is really really weird cause it is honey that has been capped so the water content is very low, could it be cause of the humidity they had for a little while and has formed on the surface of the frame? the answer might actually be the solution ay?


Cheers.
Thanks for the help.

 

[MuswellMetro]

I do not have a microscope, but from what i know, we do not have nosema in this part of the country, but still i'll see if i can get ahold on one. the intresting thing is that i fed them syrup of actual honey and they did not touch it. and the honey they have stored has gone mouldy. i removed the mouldy honey. it is really really weird cause it is honey that has been capped so the water content is very low, could it be cause of the humidity they had for a little while and has formed on the surface of the frame? the answer might actually be the solution ay?


Cheers.
Thanks for the help.

How is the hive ventaleted ,is it on solid floor, if it is and no other vents then you will get a lot of condensation


Smell, is it musty or is it the alarm hormone "banana smell" a sort of bananary combined with sick smell which they can give off when the hive is in danger

 

[Storm™]

Hi Matthew

No one else has asked yet so I thought I would. Is it possible to post a photo of your set up and if possible the things you described about the frames etc. Then the people on here may see something obvious. Just a thought as a picture paints a thousand words. All the best and good luck.

 

[Matthew]

The smell is more banana like, as you say, the hives ventilation is good, it has a top vent about 3 cm vide, and it's off the ground so has a dry floor for sure and slightly tipped.

 

[Matthew]

Hi Storm tm.

Thanks for the idea, i will take the pics as soon as the weather lets me, it's been rainy like hell here,,,

cheers.

 

[Rosti]

Mathew, I dont think a previous post mentions this. Since you dont know cause at least alievate symptons and environmental impact. Certainly having recorded the condition of the hive do everything you can to bring it back to a standard quickly, top of that list must be to get a clean OMF on there and check ventilation. Assisting with hive hygiene will help them re-gain balance what ever the cause.
If you regard their current honey reserves / forrage sources as suspect then I would put on some feed (syrup / fondant) and some pollen (patties?) in whatever format is suitable for your climate at this time of year to ensure they are getting 'safe' nourishment whilst you get to the bottom of this. What about water source - is it known? is it suspect?
Not sure where you are in your bee season? You mention low brood levels. Is this normal at this stage of your season?
Finally give them some time. If you have to make a specific intervention with a planned outcome then of course do so but extra monitoring / inspection / disruption will significantly disrupt natural recovery rate / build-up.
Good luck with it. R

 

[Matthew]

You asked if i could upload the pics from the troubled hive, Just wanted to say they've been uploaded to the forums album under Matthew's Disease.
I could Add that when i opened to take the pics i found that the hive had gone cold and no bees were alive anymore. I guess I didn't have a good beekeeping year after all, i lost most of my bees to CCD, which has hit us hard here, and now this. I have only 3 hives now.

The most interesting factor i came across was that i checked the statistics of my hives and the ones that have survived up to now have been the weakest of all hives through out the past year, which was to my surprise. I do not understand this one.

Thanks every one who poseted a help line.
Cheers.

 

[RoofTops]

Matthew, I can't see a lot wrong with your frames but none of them show any brood, which is what we need to see really. There are sealed stores and what looks like pollen, there are some patches of mould, but not a lot and a few bees with their heads in cells which is usually a sign of starvation if they are dead. However, the same frame has stores and unless the honey is crystalised and the weather was so bad they couldn't collect water they should not have starved and the number of bees in cells is very low. A starved colony can have hundreds with their heads in cells.

I can't tell what the white stuff is in the bottom of the hive. It might be some sort of wax moth but could equally be some sort of fungus. I don't think it is anything to worry about.

The tops of the frames just look as if they have propolis on them. The patches might be a sign of nosema but they don't really look right to me. It is the wrong colour but things may be different where you are due to different forage.

 

[Matthew]

yes not that much brood in the frames, the bees are all dead with their heads in the cells which is a sign of starvation, there was mould on 2 of the frames, the stuff you replied about at the bottom of the hive is water which should not be there,,, the honey is not crystalized and is still liquid, the stuff on the frames is their feces, the forage here is not that much different than the stuff you get in England. most of the dead bees were on the floor of the hive which i cleaned last week.

I do not know, for some reason i think there was a few problems all together, bad weather, weak queen which should not have been and maybe a disease.

Cheers.

 

[Mike a]

The whole hive looks damp looking at the other pictures but this one stands out to me.

Seems a little odd how some of the cells at the bottom of the picture are full of liquid, but they haven't been uncapped recently as the edges look smooth and even.

It looks as if the frame has been sprayed or large amounts of the sealed stores has seeped out and gone mouldy.. Smell the frames to see if the stores has fermented and uncap a few sealed cells in the middle to test for the same smell. I would guess if you fed them sugar water before winter they didn't remove enough of the water and it went off.

 

[RoofTops]

Looks like a classic "dead hive". Disease kills off the bees and the hive goes damp and mouldy. Honey is hygroscopic, meaning it attracts water so any uncapped stores would have become more dilute and begin to run out.

Difficult at a distance to say what killed them. Could be varroa. Do you know if you had a varroa problem and what varroa treatments did you use?

If it is anything else the hive would benefit from being sterilised and frames destroyed unless you want to melt off all the comb and sterilise them by heat or caustic soda (lye).

 

[Matthew]

Mike a.
Thanks for your comment. previously i describde the smell, the whole hive smells mouldy, the honey i do not know i will have to check and let you know. the interesting part you asked about is that i did not feed my bees before winter. they had enough stores, so there could not be a high water content in the honey. but you are right the honey has seeped out in some places, and when i tip the frame the honey starts to drip, which in the cold weather we have it's weird, the honey should be hard. and the hive was dry, no dampness.

Thanks.
Cheers.