Spray kill?

[Chris B]

I dropped 10 hives at a new apiary 5 days ago. Today I returned for inspections. One colony had a pile of dead outside - no crawlers, all well dead I'd guess a few days. Inside was sparsely populated with bees but 9 frames of brood. I found the clipped queen. No queen cells anywhere.
Lots of dead bees had tongues out.
The other 9 colonies were all perfectly normal.
RBI has been informed.

Obviously I'm suspecting a spray kill - numerous orchards and rape fields surround this spot. But would anything else affect a colony the same way?

Thanks

 

[BKF Admin]

Did you have a QE between floor and brood box for swarm control ?

 

[Chris B]

No Mark, I clip the queens and try to keep a 10 day cycle.

 

[beebreeder]

were there dead bees on the floor of the hive as well chris? did the remaining bees come up between the frames and tremble? If it was spray kill surely other hives would suffer to some extent on the same site. I had similar last year and suspected the same as you or possibly my bees robbing out a feral roof colony that had just been killed but not blocked up. RBI said it was chronic bee paralysis virus.

 

[Chris B]

Hi Kev,
no trembling. All the bees in the hive totally normal, albeit depleted in number. Whatever happened is now finished. I'm thinking it happened in the first day or two they were there. They are in an orchard but the farmer hasn't sprayed in the last 5 days except for some kind of herbicide around his gooseberries. There are several rape sites around and I can only think this hive went to a different one.
The other clue - number of bees missing must be in the 10k to 20k range but there are only a couple of thousand dead bees outside.

 

[beebreeder]

What are your ideas Chris, they charge to test for spray kill don't they and from what I was told last year it can take a while for results. This problem may be worse next year with no Neonics and more active sprays being applied to crops possibly, I guess we will have to wait and see, glad this section is not open to all.
kev

 

[Norton]

That it affected only one hive is strange. Other causes MIGHT be: overheated during move; a swarm tried to enter the hive or clustered close to the entrance and there was some fighting before it departed for a new nesting site.
Just my thoughts on this one.

 

[Chris B]

That it affected only one hive is strange. Other causes MIGHT be: overheated during move; a swarm tried to enter the hive or clustered close to the entrance and there was some fighting before it departed for a new nesting site.
Just my thoughts on this one.

Definitely not overheating. I've had that before. And it doesn't account for the missing population, a very dramatic disappearance. I did wonder about some kind of severe drifting from one hive to another with a bit of fighting but then the dead would be outside a hive that had grown in number.

 

[ROACHMAN]

I had a similar thing last month.

Whilst walking across the fields to my apiary I noticed a funny chemical smell in the air. It was a windy day and 1/4 mile upwind there was a tractor spraying weedkiller on a field of weeds (dandelion etc) in preparation to ploughing.

When I got to the apiary I checked the hives and found a massive pile of dead bees outside one of them, all the rest were normal.

I assumed that that particular colony had been in contact with the weedkiller and luckily the others had gone the other way.

The affected colony quickly recovered and is now up to near normal strength.

Not very helpful farmer - spraying in the middle of a really windy day.

 

[Norton]

When the foraging bees return to the hive with, for example, traces of a harmless to the bees substance, the foraging bees may not be accepted as hive members and fighting ensues with the death of a good number of bees.
We sometimes get this when wheat fields are sprayed with hormone to control white mustard.