Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => COLONY COLLAPSE DISORDER - TALKS & REPORTS => Topic started by: gunny on June 03, 2007, 02:57:49 pm
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I am by no means an expert on CCD but have a couple of observations and opinions.
#1. Cell phones ain't got a thing to do with it. Have worked my bees with a phone on my side and have even made/taken calls with a handsfree Bluetooth device while working with my bees. No apparent ill effects.
#2. Recovered a swarm out of my neighbors hedge and got them in a nice new hive box. Had the hive in my back yard on a picnic table where I could keep an eye on it. Fed them and fussed over that hive. Girls were used to me coming by every day, no problem. One day I walked up to the hive and got stung 3 times before I even got close to the hive. Put my suit on to see what the problem was. Found the hive to be pretty much empty, maybe 60 bees in it, no eggs, no larve, very little honey or pollen, just some drawn comb, drawn sideways. The Italians 300' away which had robbed my Russians wouldn't go near that hive to rob what was left. No dead bodies around. Not sure if the fact that the comb was drawn sideways is of any account.
#3. Doubt if it is insecticide or it would have affected my other hives, got a few in 3 diferent directions within 300'.
#4. As it was late in the season and I was busy with other things, just left the hive box where it was, about a month later the wax moths moved in. Mockingbirds took care of them when I left the frames out where they could get to the moth's larve.
#5. Mites? No more or less than the other hives around.
#6. After being outside all winter, used the fames out of that hive in a super for another hive, just harvested honey from that hive and it is doing very well. Whatever it is, if it is CCD, it does not seem to linger like foul brood.
#7. Might it be aliens? If it is, I can always get my foil hat but it might be quite a task to get the all the girls some little hats and then to get them to wear them. ;) ;)
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>>Might it be aliens? If it is, I can always get my foil hat but it might be quite a task to get the all the girls some little hats and then to get them to wear them
I wonder if the pellets for my pellet guns would work as anti-alien helmets?
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I use an outer cover of Aluminum and an inner cover of Mylar on my hives. I also removed the Satelitte TV from the hives.
Sincerely,
Brendhan
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After all is said and done, It will boil down to a new strain of Nosema and Genectics.
doak
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I have been working 3 doub. in seperate yard from my set. 7 frames of hatching brood at least 3 to 4 new frames of eggs, at least 60,000 bees in all boxes. Over 5 day per. boxes only have a few newly hatched bees. nowing that by new bees wont fly for several days where are my house bees? Anywone got a idea.
raisingtime 661-302 5173
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raisingtime. Extraordinary tale, I don't have them, not up here. Sorry about this loss for you. Do have a wonderful day and a great life. Cindi
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Looking inside the hive, it's hard to tell the house bees from the field bees, unless you see some with pollin on their legs.
Newly hatched bees are a little lighter in color.
I don't have your house bees.
doak
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raisingtime ;tell us about the food stores. did it vanish also or did they leave it? give us reports on this. where are you. need more info :-D we have oportunity to learn from your delema. what do you treat with for mites? enquiring minds need to know RDY-B
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I have been keeping bees since the late 70s here in Bakersfield Calif. The bees came into my care through the swarm process, They started as aprox. 2-3 lbs and went from there. No prob. with mites, no foul smell, nice calm girls. They had several lbs of honey and pollen from the neborhood. I still have neborhood bees the come to the house, as I have number of supers left around. No swarm cell in the boxes, have since restocked these boxes and so far no prob. Durring Pollination several keepers that set close to me lost up to half of their bees, I lost none. The condition of my 3 emptys looked the same as their's??????????. No prob. in my reg. set so far.
Raisingtime.
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Do you think the swarms came from the keepers that had problems? how long did you have these swarms before they started to decline.migratory keepers may have brought it with them. I hope the swarms whernt from your colonies might be good that you are ride of them for the sake of your other colonies. RDY-B