Difficult apiary site

[west end apiary]

The very last picture looks like a slime out to me. That's what happens when the small hive beetle completely destroy the hive.

Good luck

[omnimirage]

Hive beetle! How scary! Never heard about them until now. I've read that a stressed hive releases pheremones that attracts the beetle: I did do a lot of work on that hive last time. A lot of bees died for an unknown reason when I worked the hive. Could have I done anything to prevent this outcome? I'm now very concerned about the other hives at the apiary site... I also extracted all the capped honey from this hive, it looked fine but I've read that hives contaminaed with such is not suitable for human consumption. Anyway to tell if my bucket of honey is good?

[Lancej]

Here's a link to a YouTube post of a hive that's been slimed,  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lapU_u0kA0c

[SlickMick]

SHB for my money. Larva in pics 1&3

Mick

[Michael Bush]

>As the cell space gets small so do the emerging bees and eventually leading to a weaker hive.

Yes, the bees get smaller, but only to the point of what they should have been in the first place.  Then the bees chew out the cocoons and enlarge the cells back to what they want, which is, admittedly, quite small.  But that will give you natural sized bees instead of oversized bees.  The hive will not get weaker because of smaller bees...  The research on this was done back in the 30s by Grout.

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesnaturalcell.htm