What's happening here?

[Antipodes]

I'm wondering if anyone has a suggestion about what is happening here please?

Thanks

 

[Leigh]

Looks like a terminal varroa infestation along with a laying worker and a dud queen and starvation. Doesn't get much worse than that - sorry to see it.

 

[Michael ECB's]

I believe I see the queen, a couple of drones as well as a few laying workers....
I'm interested to see how some would handle this... (In the past I have shaken head then shaken out)
1.) Shake out
2.) Pinch old queen and shake out
3.)Add frame of young larvae
4.)Re-Queen...
5.) Additional options?

 

[Michael ECB's]

Looks like a terminal varroa infestation along with a laying worker and a dud queen and starvation. Doesn't get much worse than that - sorry to see it.

Just put my specs on..... Although I have NO experience with Varroa,,, this looks like Braula to me... Heavy infestation though...
Re Braula - I do stand to correction??

 

[Leigh]

Just put my specs on..... Although I have NO experience with Varroa,,, this looks like Braula to me... Heavy infestation though...
Re Braula - I do stand to correction??

I believe you are right! Just shows how you see what you expect to see sometimes.

 

[smok]

woow nearly every single bee carrying varoa mites look in zoom
those bees are on end of life.
sooo week,queen carrying mites is well
treat with oxalic vape.
now its too late to add any frame i think???

 

[Erichalfbee]

I'm wondering if anyone has a suggestion about what is happening here please?

Thanks

Thanks for posting this. Anybody thinking this is varroa should zoom in and take note of where you are.
It's something we don't see here in the uk. Our thymol treatments seem to have largely eradicated it.

 

[GuyNir]

Am I right thinking that bumblebees also have Braula? I seem to remember looking at one mid summer and it was covered with them...

 

[Erichalfbee]

Am I right thinking that bumblebees also have Braula? I seem to remember looking at one mid summer and it was covered with them...

Not Braula
https://www.bumblebeeconservation.org/bee-faqs/bumblebee-mites/

 

[StephenT]

This a pic I took earlier this year of a bumblebee with mites attached. As advised by Kaz at the time, these don’t feed on the bumblebee but hitch a ride and then drop off and feed on the nest material.

 

[Amari]

Looks like a terminal varroa infestation along with a laying worker and a dud queen and starvation. Doesn't get much worse than that - sorry to see it.

Am I right in thinking that there is no varroa in Australia?

 

[Into the lions den]

Colony is in the final days of collapse. Cause uncertain..a few braula will not be the reason. Presence of drones in so small a set of bees is a poor indicator....however it just looks like something we see here in some colonies most years in late spring. Some just drop so low in bee power the go below the point of recovery unaided and can trail on for quite some time slowly petering out. There are often underlying reasons for it that can only be ascertained by closer examination..nosema for example.

Would not give too much attention to the multiple eggs...one poster raised the spectre of laying workers, but in the presence of a queen this would be rare.....more likely the tiny number of bees left cannot keep up with the rate of lay of the queen...which is something we quite often see. Multiple eggs often are present in that scenario. There are a few unhatched cells remaining which are worker...and none of the eggs are up on the side walls. (the few specs on the walls of the cells are just detritus as the colony is too small to housekeep effectively.)

IF...and I would caution against it in many circumstance,.... you wish to save the queen I would make a fresh nuc from a healthy colony and save this queen ONLY and introduce her to the new nuc. The bees may well be carrying a hefty nosema load so do not save the existing unit. Nosema strongly associated with this type of symptom. Your problem may also be the queen herself..she may be a poor performer and the colony did not have enough young bees going into the wintering period and in that case the pattern may well repeat a year on and you could have had a colony with something better in it by then.

Often..if the problem IS the queen...and you save her, the unit you place her in will attempt supercedure once the pressure to lay hard comes on and they find she is not up to it.

Far from exhaustive however...there are numerous other possibilities.

 

[Arfermo]

I would attempt recovery by spraying with weak and warm syrup before anything else. Amazing how the most weak bees will recover and thrive with care. When they are mobile again give them a frame or two of bias to build upon and throw in a few workers and seal the entrance for 24 hours. Then a dose of oxalic, vaped preferably, and I think you can save them.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

I would attempt recovery by spraying with weak and warm syrup before anything else. Amazing how the most weak bees will recover and thrive with care. When they are mobile again give them a frame or two of bias to build upon and throw in a few workers and seal the entrance for 24 hours. Then a dose of oxalic, vaped preferably, and I think you can save them.

Kill them more like why OA in a country that doesn't have varroa?
It's pretty obvious that the colony is beyond redemption, either do as Murray says or just shake out and chalk it up to experience.

 

[Antipodes]

Thanks all.

My thoughts are that the queen is laying fine, and is likely to be fine, but the bees are not high enough in number to raise the eggs. She is restricted to a small part of the comb because the bees are so few in number so therefore she is constrained to laying multiple eggs in the same cells. She has only just started laying the multiples. There are some parts of the frames where she has laid singles, but the multiples were generally around where they were clustered. I suspect she is a supersedure queen that was in the colony for some time (with the original queen), and then the original queen and all bar about 40 bees and the supersedure queen took off. There were absolutely no remnants of a queen cell(s) at all in the entire colony and she definitely isn't the original queen. If it wasn't for the few remaining bees and the queen, it would have been a total Mary Celeste. I just am not sure why they would leave so few bees with her. Sealed brood was left behind but was not able to be kept warm enough to boost numbers.

I've got her and her attendants in a little poly pocket hive now but the ants are into them...so I'm trying to get them on a water moat at the moment. I'll add a cup of bees from another hive to them and see what happens.

 

[Antipodes]

Am I right in thinking that there is no varroa in Australia?

Yes, they are the wingless fly, there is only one on the queen..... ( a puff of tobacco smoke will kill the lot I'm sure).

Colony is in the final days of collapse. Cause uncertain..a few braula will not be the reason. Presence of drones is so small a set of bees is a poor indicator....however it just looks like something we see here in some colonies most years in late spring. Some just drop so low in bee power the go below the point of recovery unaided and can trail on for quite some time slowly petering out. There are often underlying reasons for it that can only be ascertained by closer examination..nosema for example.

Would not give too much attention to the multiple eggs...one poster raised the spectre of laying workers, but in the presence of a queen this would be rare.....more likely the tiny number of bees left cannot keep up with the rate of lay of the queen...which is something we quite often see. Multiple eggs often are present in that scenario. There are a few unhatched cells remaining which are worker...and none of the eggs are up on the side walls. (the few specs on the walls of the cells are just detritus as the colony is too small to housekeep effectively.)

IF...and I would caution against it in many circumstance,.... you wish to save the queen I would make a fresh nuc from a healthy colony and save this queen ONLY and introduce her to the new nuc. The bees may well be carrying a hefty nosema load so do not save the existing unit. Nosema strongly associated with this type of symptom. Your problem may also be the queen herself..she may be a poor performer and the colony did not have enough young bees going into the wintering period and in that case the pattern may well repeat a year on and you could have had a colony with something better in it by then.

Often..if the problem IS the queen...and you save her, the unit you place her in will attempt supercedure once the pressure to lay hard comes on and they find she is not up to it.

Far from exhaustive however...there are numerous other possibilities.

Thanks Into the Lions Den. I'd like to save her....I really think she is fine, but needs to be given a chance with more assistants.

 

[Into the lions den]

Yes, they are the wingless fly, there is only one on the queen..... ( a puff of tobacco smoke will kill the lot I'm sure).

Thanks Into the Lions Den. I'd like to save her....I really think she is fine, but needs to be given a chance with more assistants.

Not sure if all reading the thread are aware, but this is your equivalent of our June as regards conditions.

Would seriously recommend introducing it to a nuc with hatching brood present. Its your best chance and expansion restarts from day 1. Just adding more bees will cause it to lay more, yes, but it will be 3 weeks before any of those eggs turn to expansion bees...so three more weeks of decline. You are in mid summer NOW.....so boosting it in a serious way will give far a better prospect of success. Just adding bees to the existing few also allows higher risk of continuation of nosema issues should that actually be a factor. Sure, the queen herself may have nosema too...the stress test of a fast increase in egg demand will find her out.

Given the calendar and the time before you end up in autumnal conditions, if you plant to just add more bees a cupful will not cut it...you need to add at least a kilo, if not more. If doing that I would get them from *at least* two colonies (so they are confused) mixed together in a swarm box, then a few hours later add them to the queen. By then they should be very receptive too her and not looking for a specific queen as would be the case if you took them from a single colony.

I make these emotion based decisions myself from time to time...sometimes works, sometimes not. The cold, safe decision is to knock it on the head and start a fresh colony in the gear (after appropriate cleaning/sterilising). Not easy to give that advice when, despite having thousands of colonies, I sometime do not take my own advice. ( Still a beeKEEPER at heart.)

 

[Into the lions den]

FWIW...though it is scant evidence.......my thoughts about nosema...or other issues such as acarine or a paralysis virus stems from a single bee in the picture. Look at the wings on the worker right on the edge of the group at the 10 o'clock position. K wings....not a well bee.

 

[ericbeaumont]

to just add more bees a cupful will not cut it...you need to add at least a kilo, if not more.

I really think she is fine, but needs to be given a chance with more assistants.

Another way to boost the colony: add a frame of emerging brood and on a flying day and on a flow, swap box places with a strong colony.

 

[Antipodes]

FWIW...though it is scant evidence.......my thoughts about nosema...or other issues such as acarine or a paralysis virus stems from a single bee in the picture. Look at the wings on the worker right on the edge of the group at the 10 o'clock position. K wings....not a well bee.

Thanks very much ITLD. Lots to think about here and I want to pick your brains and experience to explore the disease issues please.
I've heard of acarine but I'm not sure that we have it here...
Tracheal Mite.

I'm just reading the books here in relation to disease and then relating it as best I can to what I have observed first hand here..so bear that in mind of course.

I can't see any evidence of chronic paralysis virus, save and except the 10 o'clock bee. The few remaining bees seem quite able to fly. They do not appear hairless, shiny or greasy. There is no evidence of any dysentery.
I want to explore Nosema further. I know it needs a microscope to identify. The colony has been tiny for a few weeks now. The queen has been laying away during that time and seems to be showing no sings of slowing down. Infected queens are supposed to cease egg laying and die within a few weeks. Is that your experience? I could not see evidence of larger than usual numbers of dead bees near the entrance. Is this a disease that would be likely to show itself at this time of the year?