Saturday, the weekend storm broke in Samhain's full fury: leaden grey skies dumped a ceaseless torrent on all of us and a vengeful autumn wind tore through Lanham's streets and fields. In the grove of young trees behind our condo row, denuded branches whipped and flailed at the sky, futilely clawing after stripped leaves flying away into the gutters and rooftops six houses over.
Sunday brought a break in rain and wind and even a weak sun returned with a hint of the summer that was now officially over. We went straight out to the garden to check the hives.
Where we found the ground littered with the dead and dying.
There must have been hundreds of bees there. Some clearly already still; others crawling over the rest in a slow, doomed trek. Here and there, though, a spark of furious energy as two bees tumbled and rolled in locked combat. Bee and wasp? Guard and robber? Worker and expelled drone? We surely couldn't tell.
Truth be told, we held onto the hope that this bleak horror was the pitiless matriarchal banning of the Boys of Summer. But to have hundreds of drones? From that, we moved down the list of plausible explanations to a wild hive looking for shelter in the storm. We knew of at least one such hive in a tree on a hiking trail. Could the rain have broken apart that colony and the refugee bees followed the scent of pampered suburban honey back to our hives? If so, their would-be invasion was repelled with full Amazonian fury. "Sing, O goddess, the anger of Melissa…"
But it couldn't be Colony Collapse Disorder. Certainly not. Unlike that mystery, we had the full evidence of mortality in heaps. Then the husband noted that the pattern of corpses was fullest in front of Blue Hive.
Later, we inspected. And poor old Blue Hive of my inexpert queening and the crazy comb and the inability to keep up with Grey Hive's meticulous energy and achievement: Blue Hive was ailing. The honey super seemed well stocked with capped frames, but there was a disquieting lack of populace about the place. The upper deep showed brood: but in the spotty 'every other cell' pattern of a queen in her decline. And no pollen that I could see. But the full shock was the lower deep. I pulled at a frame and was nearly thrown back by its lack of propolis resistance and the weightlessness of drawn comb unoccupied by egg, larvae, brood or nurse bee. The entire lower deep was a closed-up shop front with cardboard over the windows and a foreclosure sign on the front door.
In shock, we opened Grey Hive. Busy, industrious and thriving. Tokyo on a Saturday night. Lower and upper deep frames bulging with the next generation and their food stores.
We closed both hives and went off to seek advice.
Beekeeping for Dummies
According to them, there are six major bee diseases. These are:
* American Foulbrood – pearly white larvae change to brown and die after capping. Cappings sink inward and appear perforated with little holes
* European Foulbrood – twisted larvae, light tan or brown in color, capped cells seem perforated
* Nosema – bees appear weak, shivery and crawl around in front of hive, spotting in and around the hive
* Chalkbrood – early Spring disease with infected larvae turning chalky white and hard in appearance
* Sacbrood – viral disease similar to the common cold
* Stonebrood – rare but recoverable
We convince ourselves we see signs of all six...
Marin Bee Buzz e-mail
It's normal to find dead drones in the fall, how many I don't know. Drones do not contribute to the needs of a wintering hive and are kicked out as winter approaches. The Queen will produce new drones in the spring to be available for mating over the summer months. Also some of the summer foragers will be dying off as the winter bees are emerging. I believe it is more normal for the older foragers to die off in the field rather than at the hive.
If you are worried about a heavy mite population, you may have to do some treatment. The most significant sign of mite stress shows up as deformed wing virus. Look to see if some of the newly emerging bees have small, deformed wings. If so, you will need to treat aggressively. I use formic acid in the fall and treat with Apistan only as a last resort.
You may need to consider some treatments for your bee hives for mites and diseases.
For Mites you can use:
1. Apistan Strips, active ingredient: Tau-fluvalinate 10.25%.
2. Mite-Away II, also treats for tracheal mites, active ingredient: Formic Acid, a "naturally appearing substance".
3. Apiguard, "a natural and nontoxic" treatment, active ingredient: Thymol gel.
Danny, friend of Jane, a neighbor – fellow beekeeper in the County
You need to install a drone frame and then treat for mites with this recipe:
1 cup of powdered sugar
½ cup of cinnamon
¼ cup of nutmeg
When the queen lays eggs on the drone frame, take it out and freeze it. Then cut off the caps and check for mites.
(We decide that Danny has diagnosed us with Varroa mites, which are treated with powdered sugar. However, they are also visible to the eye and this is one of the few diseases we can strike from the list of probable causes. Still, I do carry cinnamon to the Garden. Weakened as it is, Blue Hive has also been targeted by ants hungry for the sugar stores. A line of cinnamon around the hive base is laid out as a defensive moat.)
Simon Bodington – Ex-patriot from Fair Albion and fellow beekeeper in the County:
You'll need to call Dadant right away and see if there's still time for a treatment. But my biggest foe this year has been the wasps. Wasps could be raiding your hive. Wasps will be killing your larvae.
Member Forum of Beesource:
Endlessly circular arguments between those who favor medical treatments and those who are committed to an fully organic approach for mite treatment. Swerving into tangential arguments over McCain and Obama.
Doug of Beekind, Sebastopol – the man who sold me the bees:
"Dead larvae is normal. A small hive is normal. But, yeah, sounds like your hive is troubled. Sounds like tracheal mites. You'll want to treat. But then…you know you won't be able to use the honey from a hive in treatment. Do you have a laying Queen? If you don't have a laying Queen, you can re-queen. But it's going to be expensive though. You'll have to get her from Hawaii…
(Do I have a queen? I haven't seen one. On subsequent hive inspections, I've seen larvae—still white and healthy enough—but uncapped and untended by the dwindling population. The husband and I have debated about dumping a frame of healthy nurse bees of Grey Hive into Blue Hive. Nurse Bees haven't yet imprinted the location of their home and won't have a scent to displease guards. They'll be accepted into the ailing hive and pressed into service tending its sick and raising its young. But the husband will only accept this if we can determine that Blue Hive is disease-free. If it isn't, we'll be sentencing the emigrant bees of Grey Hive to oblivion.)
And "Ah," I thought. "Hawaii. We'll call her Liliuokalani."
But if I can't use the honey of a treated hive, can the bees?
And where does a Winter Queen find her drones?
Doug's advice turns pitilessly Malthusian by phonecall's end.
"You have a weak hive. Making an effort to save that genetic code…is it worth it?
All the advice offered conflicts and loops and turns back on itself as it gives rise to hopes only to underscore the inevitable. The main point is made: I should have treated for diseases in the early autumn. Instead of traipsing around England and Ireland as if the western world economy and my prodigal hive weren't both crumbling. And what of those first few days when I bungled my first queen's coronation? The way we piled the two honey supers on top of them: forcing them to keep up with the high-performing Grey Hive next door? Despairing, shaming guilt, never far from my door even in the best of days, slouches in and sprawls on the couch and takes over the television remote and has me fetch it a beer from the fridge.
And because treatment edges us away from organic methods, it keeps running through my mind that these exceptional creatures have thrived and prospered for millennia without human intervention. I wonder if I haven't overreacted? If this is a bad year for the hive that will be followed by many good years to come? Yet, with each hopeful hive inspection (and none of the many and varied medical advice followed), I know that Blue Hive is slowly, but surely, declining in strength and population.
We inspect again this weekend. If we see any new brood, we'll continue to hope. If not, we'll have to make our final decision.
Til the next thrilling chapter...
