walking out of the hive and off the landing board!

[HelenHP16]

Hello - I observed what I thought was worring behaviour on my evening tea drinking session viewing the comings and goings last night, but as I'm new to this is might be quite normal and so would like your advice. A number of quite small bees were walking out of the hive and straight off the landing board onto the ground making no attempt what so ever to fly - I put a few of them back but they just launched themselves off the precipice again. They have just completed their first week of Api-life var treatment but this is the first time I've seen this. Many thanks

H

 

[meidel]

Very early on we were told by an old beek never to pick bees off the ground to return to the hive - they may be lurking on the ground for all sorts of foul reasons. Healthy bees should be able to fly back into their hive.

I've yet to do my autumn varroa treatment so I don't know if your bees are reacting to apilife var ... but bees crawling out of the hive because they've had their wings and hairs chewed off by their housemates may be victims of chronic paralysis virus ... which varroa is a vector of

 

[HelenHP16]

Thanks for that advice - I'll leave the fallen where they are in future. The bees doing this look healthy - wings in tact and they don't look black and shiny as described on the beebase site

 

[jp19sqn]

I have a hive with the same complaint and I gave them apilife var BECAUSE they were doing that. Look out for shiny black bees being tossed out by others and some shaking behaviours......An occasion to actually warrant a chemical varroa treatment. Also a good feed may help as it is a virus you can't d much more than treat to reduce the vector and improve general health.... Assuming it is Chronic paralysis virus of course....give em a dusting of icing sugar for good measure...

 

[jp19sqn]

Guess we were typing at the same time...

 

[Poly Hive]

Keep your sugar for syrup it may do some good. It won't on the bees. Myth.

PH

 

[itma]

Before starting treatment, what varroa drop were you seeing?

And is this an established full colony, or a recent swarm?

 

[HelenHP16]

Hi - it was a nuc that I took delivery of in July. The drop was about 20/day. they are in a full hive now but on advice from the forum (thank you) I have reduced the space they have to help them draw out more comb.

 

[itma]

Hi - it was a nuc that I took delivery of in July. The drop was about 20/day. they are in a full hive now but on advice from the forum (thank you) I have reduced the space they have to help them draw out more comb.

20/day in August is a very heavy infestation.
And from a small colony (not even having all frames in) that is a VERY VERY heavy infestation.

You do need to hit them hard as (apart from virus problems now), you *need* to produce healthy winter bees, quite soon, if not now.

Check the dropcount after treatment (a fortnight after?) and consider additional treatment if there's more than something like 4/day.