Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => DISEASE & PEST CONTROL => Topic started by: Frantz on October 13, 2008, 12:58:58 pm
-
Ok, my OB hive is all of a sudden disgusting. One night last week, I finally nixed my queen from the chaulk brood hive. I had her in my ob hive to check her out for a bit. For about two weeks I watched her and she did ok it seemed just did not lay that much. So I pinched her and got a frame of brood and bees from my other strong hive and put in there... I am doing a few presentations in the coming weeks and wanted good bees and thought they might build a queen cell or two to show the kids. Anyway, I have had them in there for about 4 days and there is a pretty good stench and the tube is got this yellow gunk in it. The hive itself has dead bees in the bottom and they are all very slow moving and lethargic??? I thought that there might be some fighting as some of the foragers would return to the ob hive and with the new bees there might be some causualties and such, but wow, this yellow stuff and the smell??? Just has me puzzled. We did get a very cold snap and 4" of snow this weekend, which is unseasonal.
My question is " Is this something that I need to clean out the OB hive and get a new tube, or is this just a series of unfortunate events???" With the cold, and new bees and fighting going on etc.
I am so mad thinking that I did something stupid, but I can't quite figure out what it was just yet.....
The yellow is in very large globs, not like be poop or anything, it looks like drops you would spill from a cup or something... Pretty good sized globs...
I will try to see if I can get it to show up in pics and post them if need be.
Thanks for the help everyone.
F
-
Ugh...makes you feel sick, doesn't it.......
Have you seen SHB?
Do they have enough honey?
Can they get into and out of the hive freely?
I'm asking the questions because my obs. hive had similar things happening to it this last spring. They ran out of honey, got slow and lethargic, couldn't get up into the tube, then the SHB swooped in and made a mess. For some reason my obs. hive is really slow to take sugar water.
Because of the events, they are super stressed out. I'm not sure why they are dying, whether that be starvation or stress or ???. When they die, they often defecate, I think that is most likely the yellow gunk. It would have to be either that or pollen(too thick) or fermented honey which would indicate SHB.
Rick
-
Bee poop can be in pretty big splotches of yellow.