I was watching the hive in my back yard last night and saw a worker struggling to carry out something rather large and light in color. She fell to the grass just off the landing board and I retrieved what I believe to be an unhatched, but otherwise pretty well fully formed bee.
This morning I found 9 of these pretty well colorless, but otherwise well formed unhatched bees. There is no apparent mold or slime or physical damage that I can see on them. They just look to be a few days from hatching when they expired for some reason.
I don't know what is going on and if I should be concerned??? Anyone have any ideas.
Thanks in advance,
Dave
Are they drones or workers? Are you in a dearth there right now? If you are in a dearth, the hive will no longer want to spend resources on drones and remove them in all egg, larval, and pupal stages. If the dearth is especially severe they'll boot the mature drones out as well.
Many times at this time of the year it can be for reasons of near starvation of the hive. Bees will cannibalize and reserve any resources they can in a last ditch attempt for survival.
First, I would make sure they are not near starving. I have found a few nucs and hives like this in the past couple weeks. Then I would concentrate on mite issues as they could be cleaning out infested larvae.
The hive is very heavy. It's not the most scientific way, but having no hive scale I cannot in the least budge the hive as far as tipping it forward with 1 hand, so I know they've got good resources. . . at least not near starvation.
But just now checking the hive after getting off from work this afternoon, I'm seeing quite a few crawlers in the grass outside of the hive. Somewhere in the neighborhood of maybe 25-50 within a 3-5 ft. radius or so of the landing board.
So the hive probably has a high mite count and DWV (deformed wing virus). Something's undoubtedly wrong with those larvae. Visually I cannot see anything, but the bees are finding something wrong. I was checking the grass around the hive before spotting the crawlers, and actually found one late stage larvae a small bit alive. Somehow the bees are detecting something wrong with the larvae and removing them from their cells. I don't think they are drones. They don't look big enough to me.
We're in a dearth. The goldenrod just doesn't seem to be blooming. It's been on the verge for a couple of weeks. I don't know what triggers it to bloom, but it's like it's frozen in a pre-bloom state. Hopefully the queen will soon shut down and get rid of these mites.
It's always something. . .
Was the hive moved in the past day or so? I moved a hive off a shed and nearly dropped it. After the jostling I noticed a lot of larvae and pupae being dragged out of the hive over the next 24 hours.
No, it's been in the same spot since I installed the package in the spring.