I have had this pic for a while, but had to wait to get my post past thirty. This came out of my first set of Drone combs that I pulled last month. I pulled only a couple that had mites on them that looked mature. But then I had a few more that looked like this guy. Are the spots young or Varroa larvae, not sure of the correct term. That vast majority of everything I pulled was clean. Thanks for your feed back.
(http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j194/jrj7676/IMG_20140718_204958631.jpg)
The stages of a Varroa are egg, protonymph, deutonymph and adult. For females you could divide adult into unmated and mated. Only the mated females are viable when the bee emerges.
Quote from: Michael Bush on August 13, 2014, 07:45:55 AM
The stages of a Varroa are egg, protonymph, deutonymph and adult. For females you could divide adult into unmated and mated. Only the mated females are viable when the bee emerges.
So would you say what's on that Drone is a Varroa in one of the stages you mentioned? Thanks for the terminology help.
Hotburn,
What you are looking at is an imature drone that was pulled out of his cell because he had mites in the cell and your bees smelled it. That is a very good thing. If left alone the bees will drag him out of the hive and get him as far away as possible. My bees like to drop them in my pool.
Jim
Thanks Jim. I was the one that actually pulled him out. The frame was a green drone comb frame from Mann Lake and I pulled them on day 22. Then I uncapped and randomly pull some out and this was what I seen. I thought it was Varroa, but just wasn't sure. Thanks for the conformation.
Ha! In your pool!
How gruesome ... :)
Quote from: estreya on August 15, 2014, 02:06:18 PM
Ha! In your pool!
How gruesome ... :)
Yes. We were constantly throwing them out of the pool and most of them would walk right back into the pool and fall back in. It didn't matter which side of the pool we placed them. Then one day I standing behind my hives, looking over the top, watching the entrances when a bee dragged another bee out of the hive, went airborne, flew straight for about 30' made a 90 degree turn, flew the length of the pool and dropped it at the far end of the pool. I walked over to it picked it up and the bee had one regular set of wings on one side and the other set were smaller. It had DWV. Deformed Wing Virus. That is how we found out that they are using the pool as their dumping ground.
Jim