Problems with drawn comb

[JBallard2021]

Hello everyone:

I’m a new beekeeper this year, and already I’ve grappled with SHB and a drought in Texas.

I did a dusting with powdered sugar as instructed as a precautionary tactic so that my hive wouldn’t go into fall with varroa and I wouldn’t have to use chemicals.

During my inspection today, I photographed a comb that looks as if it’s been burned or chewed.

Does anyone know what might have happened here?

I did another varroa scan with the app and it shows that my hive is varroa-free.

However, there’s a lid of debris on the hive floor, which leads me to believe the bees chewed this out themselves.

Should I freeze it or toss it? Or leave it? They’re not working on this frame at all.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Cannot see any photos.
A few bits of advice - sprinkling with sugar is better employed on donuts - it has very little effect on varroa and is a pretty pointless exercise
Forget apps, you have varroa - treat it.

 

[JBallard2021]

The photos are showing up on my end. Would someone let me know if you’re also unable to see them?

I don’t have varroa in my hive. I was told that a powdered sugar sprinkle encourages the bees to groom one another and helps dislodge varroa, and is a good preventative going into fall.

I’m open to any and all scientifically based information. I would like to keep my hive chemical-free. And pest-free, of course.

 

[JBallard2021]

Cannot see any photos.
A few bits of advice - sprinkling with sugar is better employed on donuts - it has very little effect on varroa and is a pretty pointless exercise
Forget apps, you have varroa - treat it.

 

[RichardK]

It looks to me like you have / have had a wax moth infestation.

How many frames are in the hive and how populated is it? A strongly populated hive wouldn't have this problem. If you don't have enough bees in there, remove a few frames and put a dummy board in to section the unused part of the hive off from the populated section. Then put the affected frames in the freezer for 72 hours to kill any wax moth larvae.

 

[JamezF]

It looks to me like you have / have had a wax moth infestation.

Yes, that's my thinking too.

James

 

[JamezF]

I don’t have varroa in my hive. I was told that a powdered sugar sprinkle encourages the bees to groom one another and helps dislodge varroa, and is a good preventative going into fall.

If there are varroa in other hives or feral colonies in your area then it's likely that you also have varroa in yours unfortunately, even if you don't have any evidence that they are present. They spread. All it takes is for one worker to get disorientated and beg her way into a "clean" colony, or for a worker from a "clean" colony to visit a flower that has a mite present, and the mites can start to spread through the colony.

The idea behind sprinkling powdered sugar onto the bees was that they'd groom each other and dislodge the mites. As far as I'm aware though, it's been demonstrated to be pretty much pointless as a form of control and wouldn't work as a preventative in any case because it only could be effective for the duration that the bees are covered in sugar.

James

 

[Ian123]

I’ll be blunt dusting bees with sugar is crap and no real treatment at all. There’s organic treatments such as oxalic or thymol. However given your location and you may well be dealing with AHB to some degree or another treatment may not be required. I’d suggest finding a competent local for lessons/advice pertinent to your area.

 

[Erichalfbee]

I don’t have varroa in my hive.

Yes you do. Do a sugar ROLL or alcohol wash and you will see

I was told that a powdered sugar sprinkle encourages the bees to groom one another and helps dislodge varroa, and is a good preventative going into fall.

.

It does help drop all the phoretic mites but only if you dust every frame liberally and even then it kills open brood
Most of your mites are under the cappings

I would like to keep my hive chemical-free. And pest-free, of course.

Well, wax moth is a pretty nasty pest and it's there because your colony is likely weak.
How many of those top bar frames have food, how many, brood and how many have bees on them?

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

I don’t have varroa in my hive.

 

[Erichalfbee]

I'd have a wager that some of these white dots inside the cells are varroa poo

 

[Erichalfbee]

Beginners.
It's likely that Mr Ballard as a beginner has been told this by somebody else.....

 

[Ian123]

I'd have a wager that some of these white dots inside the cells are varroa poo

View attachment 33874

Surely not the app says otherwise

 

[Erichalfbee]

Surely not the app says otherwise

Sorry....I think the app is bloody ridiculous. How can you app something that has to be hands on? What's the point of keeping bees if you have an app to do it!
You might as well adopt a hive and get your £20 jars of honey for Christmas

 

[Ian123]

Sorry....I think the app is bloody ridiculous. How can you app something that has to be hands on? What's the point of keeping bees if you have an app to do it!
You might as well adopt a hive and get your £20 jars of honey for Christmas

Do you really think I was being serious….

 

[Erichalfbee]

And I'd take these reviews with a sackful of salt

 

[Erichalfbee]

Do you really think I was being serious….

No...I was just extrapolating

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

As PT Barnum said ' there's one born every minute'

 

[JamezF]

I was surprised to find that there was an app claiming to calculate the number of varroa present in a colony. I found several for counting varroa on a tray which might well be fair enough if you get an acceptably good image, but also one that claimed to be able to calculate numbers from photos of bees on a brood frame using an AI system trained on manually checked images. Allegedly they can then calculate the number of "hidden" mites (I assume that means in cells or on the sides of bees not visible to the camera) because they believe they've found a correlation between the two numbers.

I'm prepared to believe that it's possible to train an AI system to count visible mites in an image. I struggle with the rest of it however, unless there are some published research papers to back it up.

Their website also says: "Last year our beekeepers found over 236 000 varroa mites in 140 000 hives". Not even two per hive? Are most of their users in Australia? It just doesn't seem a plausible statistic.

James

 

[Erichalfbee]

I'm prepared to believe that it's possible to train an AI system to count visible mites in an image. I struggle with the rest of it however, unless there are some published research papers to back it up.

You can't count invisible mites