Why would the bees kill their larvae?

[Anduril]

The images aren't great, but they look more like wax moth larvae. A better picture would be with them on the frame. Do the frames have silky webbing (wax moth) or have your stores started fermenting and the frames look glossy which would indicate small hive beetle.

 

[jarmo henttu]

View attachment 40138View attachment 40139

What about varroa

 

[BexGotBees]

The images aren't great, but they look more like wax moth larvae. A better picture would be with them on the frame. Do the frames have silky webbing (wax moth) or have your stores started fermenting and the frames look glossy which would indicate small hive beetle.

 

[BexGotBees]

[Package bees installed 4/6] I found a dead bee on the bottom of the hive, and it was covered in "webs" and when I pulled on the webbing, this larvae crawled out and tried to get back in. I had seen the bees try to push swaths of webbing from the entrance as well. I still see no varroa, nor beetles, and there is a frame with one side about ⅔ full of empty comb, except for about twenty dead & almost completely formed larvae (that looked like drone cells) no honey stores, no nectar or bee bread. I'm convinced this hive was weak, then the moths came in and just about killed them off. I obtained a new queen tuesday because I can't see one in the hive (not many bees left so I'm sure I'd have seen her) and I took a frame of honey & bees from another hive, and a frame of brood from another and placed them in there as well (i sprayed them with sugar syrup). Tomorrow will be day three with the new queen still in her cage and I will check to see if she's been fed or if it looks like she'll be rejected, hopefully they'll accept her any advice as to what to look for when I open it up tomorrow? How will I know if they've accepted her? Bees are coming and going since I placed the new frames so I'm hopeful! Oh, and I moved the frames from a regular hive into a nucleus hive so they don't have too much excess room for any more pests to invade while they hopefully recoup. Did I do ok in your opinion? Hopefully, I didn't wait too long pretty sure I was down to only nurse bees, and DRONES and maybe not more than a thousand bees all together.

 

[Anduril]

Wax moth will take advantage of a weak hive and you may have inadvertently killed the queen during manipulations, it happens. Varroa can hide underneath the abdominal segments of the bees, one reason why you haven't seen any and a hive that is now starving, plus the pathogens derived from varroa. The queen introduction may or may not work, you have to look out for abdomens sticking up in the air if they like the queen or abdomens down trying to sting her. But if you have drone laying workers then the queen will be rejected. Keep us posted.

 

[Antipodes]

This is what is destroying my hive.

It looks like a maggot of some sort feasting on the dead larva.

 

[BexGotBees]

The images aren't great, but they look more like wax moth larvae. A better picture would be with them on the frame. Do the frames have silky webbing (wax moth) or have your stores started fermenting and the frames look glossy which would indicate small hive beetle.

What's strange is I see none of the webbing on the frames. I've seen larvae on the observation board but didn't know for sure which they were. No goo or slime on the frames either. I thought varroa, as several have suggested, but I haven't seen a single one and I've pulled several bee larva out and some are drones, but zero varroa. The hive is so weak I can't spare any bees for a wash to be certain it's not. Not yet anyway.

 

[Antipodes]

What's strange is I see none of the webbing on the frames. I've seen larvae on the observation board but didn't know for sure which they were. No goo or slime on the frames either. I thought varroa, as several have suggested, but I haven't seen a single one and I've pulled several bee larva out and some are drones, but zero varroa. The hive is so weak I can't spare any bees for a wash to be certain it's not. Not yet anyway.

The photo you posted was not wax moth larva or varroa but a maggot or worm of some sort eating the dead, undeveloped bee. The maggot isn’t the thing that killed the undeveloped bee, but is simply eating it after it died. Billions of bees die around the world every day and are eaten up by all manner of things.