Dead Bees

[Rich V]

Evertime I go out to my hives I find several dead,and dying bees on the ground in front of the hives. Is this normal?

Rich V.

[leominsterbeeman]

1,2,3 new bees a day - OK.  

If you are seeing like 10 -20 new dead bees a day --then I would suspect something.  Like pesticide poisining.

How are the live bees?  Are they staggering around?  Just sitting on the entrance?  Look lazy?

A normal hive will have about a 100 bees die a day, but they tend to move away from the hive to die, unless they can't get too far away.

[FordGuy]

I don't know much...I will give it a go...

slow, lethargic bees, some dying on ground/can't fly, possible trachea mites stopping up winpipe.

Check for little red varroa mites on bodies of still living bees (not dead ones)

uncap some drone larva to look for varroa.

ask local farmers if they spray pesticide.  

Are bodies without heads? if so, may be hornets.

good luck.

[Rich V]

I have  alot of bees flying around and in an out of hives. Very active. No mites on bodys or live bees,and no spraying has been done. Must be natures course. I'll keep a watch full eye.

Thanks
Rich V

[manowar422]

I don't know if this is normal or not, as I am a newbie...

After installing my package during the first week of April,
I noticed that over the course of two to three days later,
a great number of drones (25 - 30) were crawling away
from the hive to die.

I wonder if this would be some type of survival thing given
the drones "lazy" tendancies :lol:

[Lesli]

I noticed a few dead drones around my packages, too. It doesn't worry me, as long as the colonies are queen right and doing their thing. Now, are the girls killing them, or refusing to feed them? Or were they just "old drones" that happened to get caught up in the packages? Dunno.