Last year we had a lot of bees with deformed wings with many of them just walking away from the hive. This year we have been doing powdered sugar treatments every 7-10 days for the last month and our natural mite drop is around 10 mites/day. We see "some" bees with deformed wings, maybe one or two here and there.
My question is: If we see some deformed wings but seem to have reasonably low mite drops, is there a problem? Can you have DWV with low mite counts? Are a few deformed wings "acceptable or normal" ?
Thanks, Ray
>Are a few deformed wings "acceptable or normal" ?
IMO yes. A few are acceptable. But you also have to differentiate deformed wings from frayed wings. Young fuzzy bees with crumpled wings from old shiny bees with frayed wings.
Thank you Michael, I'll take a closer look. I believe they are new bees.
Ray
I have DWV. I have observed that bees with DWV symptom, young bees, can´t sting, while the old bees with frayed wings show the sting. Not sure if I´m right.
(http://img516.imageshack.us/img516/9872/dsc09612vk2.th.jpg) (http://img516.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dsc09612vk2.jpg)
Young bees usually can't sting and DVW bees usually don't live long. I don't know if it's an absolute rule but it's a reasonable assumption.