This is from the weakest hive in the apiary. Five frames of brood, almost no nectar stores, good pollen stores. Brood pattern is solid but they have a lot of drobe comb in patches and obviously she's skipping those now. They have a "mann lake" feeder on top but this hive hasn't found it (and I'm askeered to put in a scent).
Anyway, look here at this brood. I see this sort of thing a lot and I don't know quite what to make of it. Referring to the three worker pupae in the center of the pic: I think they've been uncapped from outside and they're dead in the cell. Then when I dug one out you can see they have some tiny brown specks on them. What's that about? Some day I'll have a microscope setup maybe but surely yall have seen this.
I think they look like baby mites, maybe what they call the "protonymph" stage. In which case it's an "Oh no! Oh yes!" situation -- oh no because that's a lot of mites, oh yes, because apparently the bees think so too and they're doing something about it.
Your observations welcome. ;)(https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20201008/053e8c4e4586a525aff3e3c4f523f21f.jpg)(https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20201008/4c7e7a8dc355b2392fd733c62b999e21.jpg)
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Looks like mite overload to me.. A good dose of OAV might help tremendously. One weekly for 3 treatments.
Do you treat your bees?
Quote from: Ben Framed on October 08, 2020, 07:46:25 AM
Do you treat your bees?
Haven't for ...5? Years. Maybe six.
Might bee time to start.
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Quote from: yes2matt on October 08, 2020, 08:46:02 AM
Quote from: Ben Framed on October 08, 2020, 07:46:25 AM
Do you treat your bees?
Haven't for ...5? Years. Maybe six.
Might bee time to start.
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Thanks Matt. There are those who do not treat but is seems that approach is like trying to paddle upriver in a equally forceful current. I have been here for 2 1/2 years and it seems the results reached in most cases of non treating gradually end up in this way. Some do not like the idea of. chemicals, you can always treat organically as pointed out by Iddee. Organically is a big word. I personally see no disgrace in going this route. On the contrary. At least we have effective natural options. Thats my opinion anyway. Wishing you the best.
Organically
adverb
1.
from or in connection with living matter.
"organically enriched soil"
2.
without the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, or other artificial chemicals.
The male mite is 1/3rd the size of the female.
The very small brown specks on the pupa are probably debris from the bees uncapping the cell, or flakes from the cell walls.
If it were me....
I'd take a clear pic on hi-res with my phone, then zoom in on the speck and see what it is, or if it has legs.
I don't bother with magnifying lenses anymore. The phone cam is so much better quality, and has flash if I need it.
Quote from: TheHoneyPump on October 12, 2020, 03:13:28 AM
The male mite is 1/3rd the size of the female.
I thought of that. But at Beefest 2019 we spotted some male mites and they were grey/translucent. Definitely not the brown of these.
Quote from: AR Beekeeper on October 12, 2020, 10:58:44 AM
The very small brown specks on the pupa are probably debris from the bees uncapping the cell, or flakes from the cell walls.
Totally a possibility. I could have gotten a better pic even with my phone. I didn't double check the focus. I also could have sampled those other cells. Next time!
Quote from: FloridaGardener on October 12, 2020, 03:47:57 PM
If it were me....
I'd take a clear pic on hi-res with my phone, then zoom in on the speck and see what it is, or if it has legs.
I don't bother with magnifying lenses anymore. The phone cam is so much better quality, and has flash if I need it.
Five kids being homeschooled so a microscope is in our future anyway. ;) may as well get some extra mileage. I would like a digital one for purposes of capturing images to share.
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if no treatment works thats great and more natural. however i consider bees to be livestock and should be cared for as such. I have used the shop towel saturated with oa and glycerine. this placed on the brood chamber will eventually be chewed up and removed from the hive . in the process the treatment is distributed throughout the hive for an extended time ,supposedly for as much a month. :beemaster:
Those specs don't look big enough for mites. The lower stages of the Varroa mites are white and not purplish brown like adults. For each foundress there is one male (the first egg that is laid) and then another female egg every 32-36 hours or so. So at the end when they emerge there are eight or nine female mites. But of these only one or two make it to maturity and get mated and only those are viable.
I finally got back into the hive today. I did sugar rolls on this colony and the one next to it. This one had a single mite, and a speck of "maybe" and the one beside it had five mites in samples of 300.
So they're not over run now, although they might have been three weeks ago.
This colony had some uncapped worker pupae like before but not as many. I used a little twig to pull four of them out of the cell. Two had a couple specks like my first picture, one was clean, and the last one looks like this.
Holy camoly what is that?
They are red-brown, about the color of an adult mite. They are all about the same size. They are cylindrical, and it looks like three segments maybe? And shiny outside. Really very tiny and I didn't try to smush or cut one open.
Like turds.
Or egg sacs.
My partner there at the farm thinks he saw one move. I looked real close for quite a while and didn't see movement.
Whatcha think now?(https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20201028/adc08b0d4a5b7104aa93ba65592b27a6.jpg)(https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20201028/3a6ab35030de42d74deb48a0347cd1fd.jpg)
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Quote from: yes2matt on October 28, 2020, 07:00:40 PM
I finally got back into the hive today. I did sugar rolls on this colony and the one next to it. This one had a single mite, and a speck of "maybe" and the one beside it had five mites in samples of 300.
So they're not over run now, although they might have been three weeks ago.
This colony had some uncapped worker pupae like before but not as many. I used a little twig to pull four of them out of the cell. Two had a couple specks like my first picture, one was clean, and the last one looks like this.
Holy camoly what is that?
They are red-brown, about the color of an adult mite. They are all about the same size. They are cylindrical, and it looks like three segments maybe? And shiny outside. Really very tiny and I didn't try to smush or cut one open.
Like turds.
Or egg sacs.
My partner there at the farm thinks he saw one move. I looked real close for quite a while and didn't see movement.
Whatcha think now?(https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20201028/adc08b0d4a5b7104aa93ba65592b27a6.jpg)(https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20201028/3a6ab35030de42d74deb48a0347cd1fd.jpg)
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Okay, I totally see this sometimes on drone pupae when I uncap them. I can confirm that whatever this is, it is not alive. I have been wondering exactly what it is too though. It almost looks like really tiny waxworm frass, but it's too small to be that.
Wow. That is awesome. Eggs (or fras) from something, obviously.
Two possibilities I can think of. One much more sinister than the other.
- wax moth eggs
- small hive beetle eggs
- .... <insert here> eggs
Any remote possibility of getting a few of those under a microscope or high xpower camera to see the detail of the egg?
Awesome pic not sure what they are but I'm certain not varroa. In my experience small hive beetles and wax moth are more white to creamy color.
Hope someone can identify these, very interesting.
[attachment=0][/attachment]
Pic of small hive beetle eggs.
Blessings
[attachment=0][/attachment]
Dead varroa on the thorax, chest. Just wanted to show the color of a dead mite.
The pic looks to be some sort of bug dropping, as already stated, maybe ants. Just guessing.
Van
Pic of debris located on my bottom board after treatment with Oxalic acid vapor. The white stuff is diatomaceous earth. There are hundreds of dead mites, bee parts, wax, pollen but also tiny lil brown specs as in the topic. I had to reduce the resolution of the photo to post on BeeMaster so the lil brown specs may not show up very well, but they are scattered in the photo.
Good pictures Mr Van.
Quote from: TheHoneyPump on October 28, 2020, 10:37:17 PM
Wow. That is awesome. Eggs (or fras) from something, obviously.
Two possibilities I can think of. One much more sinister than the other.
- wax moth eggs
- small hive beetle eggs
- .... <insert here> eggs
Any remote possibility of getting a few of those under a microscope or high xpower camera to see the detail of the egg?
Mr HP I am wondering about this also. Does anyone have pictures of wax moth eggs or frass? As we know mite frass is white color little specks so we know it is not that, and now thanks to Mr Vans clear picture, we know it is not Beetle eggs. Another possibility, does anyone have pictures of beetle frass? I am leaning more to some type frass, the reason, crickets have a similar looking frass. (anyone else here ever fish with crickets)? :smile:
But in fairness, looking at the OP the speck on the larvae does look like a mite. Perhaps that was a mite in the picture of the larva back in the OP?
It's the picture in post reply #11 that leads me to the frass way of thinking.
Definitely not Varroa mites. Keep in mind there are two kinds of wax moths. Lesser and greater. Also they change size as they mature and the size of their frass changes as they do.
http://www.bushfarms.com/beespests.htm#waxmoths
http://www.bushfarms.com/beeswaxmoths.htm
Quote from: Michael Bush on November 02, 2020, 02:07:18 PM
Definitely not Varroa mites. Keep in mind there are two kinds of wax moths. Lesser and greater. Also they change size as they mature and the size of their frass changes as they do.
http://www.bushfarms.com/beespests.htm#waxmoths
http://www.bushfarms.com/beeswaxmoths.htm
👍🏻
Quote from: Michael Bush on November 02, 2020, 02:07:18 PM
Definitely not Varroa mites. Keep in mind there are two kinds of wax moths. Lesser and greater. Also they change size as they mature and the size of their frass changes as they do.
http://www.bushfarms.com/beespests.htm#waxmoths
http://www.bushfarms.com/beeswaxmoths.htm
The state inspector also guesses wax moth.
But these pics are of larvae pulled from the center of a frame in the center of the nest, not abandoned comb on the edges where I might expect wax moth activity.
Pictured is the frass of the wax moths that keep my frames clean. It is also pretty consistent in size, a lot bigger (I mean a tiny bit bigger than tiny) than the specks in question. And also you can see the striations in the turds they are going the longitudinal way and it's hard to see in my previous pics but the specks also have striations, two, but in the latitude.
But I don't know anything about a lesser wax moth. If it was in my backyard I'd get a couple more out and cut the cells and freeze the samples till I could arrange a microscope. (https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20201108/24931e7bc2838b013751ec8e697cfce5.jpg)(https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20201108/30b2ffa49fd97ab9437f2a89c36d7c9b.jpg)
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Usually the first hint you have of lesser wax moth is bees that are struggling to emerge. They look energetic enough to emerge but they seem stuck. The lesser wax moth has them tangled in it's web which it burrowed down the center of the midrib.