Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You.

I checked in with my backyard hive the other day, expecting to find them busily working on drawing new foundation and storing nectar. They were doing that (see above), but...

...apparently they are working on some side projects as well.  Dang!  This is the fancy pants Russian hygienic queen I bought last year.  Multiple capped and uncapped swarm cells in the middle brood box (I use all 8 frame westerns).  

Here is a queen larvae swimming in a bath of royal jelly.  And WOW, my gloves are dirty!

Here is another surprise for me.  Look closely...

Multiple varroa mites in a single drone cell.  I check the mite board on this hive regularly, and I have counted maybe one mite in the last few weeks.  But scrape open the drone cells and it's a different story.  This highlights the importance of monitoring and testing for varroa beyond just visual inspections of a mite board.  

It's not all doom and gloom though.  The bees and brood look good and they are bringing in loads of nectar and pollen.  Swarm season is upon us! I hope this queen stays.

Death in the Afternoon

The green hive on the right was the star this year, at one point supporting THREE active honey supers.  And now it is dead. 

 

The sunny scene and busy bees distracted me from noticing what was really going on.  See those emerging bees?  They are all dead.  And the worst part?  Every single capped brood cell in this photo contains a dead bee.  This is a hive with no future.

There is a window during the late summer season when mite populations can explode in the hive.  I was busy with other events in my life and didn't take care of the bees as I should, and they paid the price for my negligence.  Lesson learned the hard way.

These are bees I pulled from brood cells for closer inspection.  The culprit is Deformed Wing Virus, a disease transmitted by Varroa mites.

Here is a young bee exhibiting the classic symptoms of the disease - distorted, twisted wings.  Compare them to the bee on the left.

What a sad realization.  Do you see the queen?  She is presiding over a hive with a death sentence.  At this time of year, the bees developing within brood cells are the ones that will see the hive through the winter. There is no new generation of bees to sustain this colony.  

To make matters worse, this was also the time of year that yellowjackets were at their most vicious, tearing into colonies and killing bees. A weakened hive struggling with disease is an easy mark.

Once I determined that this hive would not survive, I took off the honey super that was supposed to be their reserve for the winter and reduced the colony down to only two brood boxes. 

A few days later I opened the hive to silence.  Thousands of bees gone in a matter of days, and frame after frame of dead capped brood. Not a single bee, except this one. The queen was the sole survivor!  With no attendants, she was struggling to stay alive.