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Author Topic: Fly Maggots  (Read 3669 times)

Offline Understudy

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Fly Maggots
« on: January 15, 2006, 01:11:22 pm »
Well this is interesting. For those of you who have been following the moving bees and The West Palm Beach Honeybee Massacre and other items I have posted about my bee relocation, will note that I am now in a completely different topic area.

It has been a week since I relocated the bees. The status of the queen is still unkown.  I went in today for a quick look. Things are not great. There has been little hive building and there are no more capped egg cells. And then to top it all off the bottom of the hive was covered in fly maggots, not a few but a lot of them. They are fly maggots because there were plenty of flys in the hive also.

I went in and scraped all of the maggots off the board and cleaned up as much as I could.

The status is not looking good right now. While the hive is running back and forth getting pollen. I am not seeing an increase. And without new egg cells it looks like they will slowly fade out.

So here is the question.
1. What can I do about the fly / maggot issue?


You can view the pics here:
http://www.understudy.net/images/inspection/index.html

Sincerely,
Brendhan
The status is not quo. The world is a mess and I just need to rule it. Dr. Horrible

Offline Jack Parr

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Not good
« Reply #1 on: January 18, 2006, 08:52:36 pm »
You don't have enough bees in that box. You would be better off with a 4-5 frame nuc box. Kinda late for that now however.
There are not enough bees to rid the hive of unwanted intruders and the colony will probably fail.

Do you know what capped brood looks like?

Can you see any larva?  Is there some larva un-capped? If so the workers can make a NO good queen that way. If they are doing that you will see a cell probably sticking almost straight out the comb where the larve is that wasn't there before.

Practically speaking, a novice starting off in the bees would be better served with a purchased, or stolen even :wink: nuc, or, second best, a package with queen.

The bee colony transfers take some practice and are often not successful.

Well at least you gave it a shot.

Offline Finsky

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Fly Maggots
« Reply #2 on: January 19, 2006, 01:35:17 am »
You should examine is there is fermented honey or dead brood in the hive. If much brood is rotten bees are not able to clean combs. There are tiny holes in rotten brood caps.

Hive is too large to colony if they cannot defend they hive corners.

Offline Michael Bush

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Fly Maggots
« Reply #3 on: January 19, 2006, 08:05:26 am »
There shouldn't be a LOT of any kind of larvae on the bottom.  Nor should there be a lot of flies int he hive.  I'd look closely and make sure the larvae are from flies.  They could also be from wax moths or Small Hive Beetles.  Just because you see flies doesn't meant these larvae are theirs.  Look up pictures of SHB and Wax moth larvae to compare.  Both start small and end up larger.  SHB larvae are the smaller of the two and have spikes on their backs.
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