Civil war in a hive??

[tjc1]

12th year beekeeper, haven't seen this before; 4 hives, only 1 with these symptoms - it almost seems as if the bees in the hive are fighting with each other!

- hive is a second year hive from a nuc I created the year before, with the bees raising a queen

- this hive had a short and light bout of chalkbrood in July but otherwise has seemed healthy, if slow to build up

- treated with Formic Pro in August and with OAV through October - post-treatment mite drops ran from a high of 290 to 11 after the most recent treatment.

- about a month ago started noting an increase of unusual activity at the front entrance relative to the other hives - always a  throng of bees on the entrance and the cinderblock top that the hive sits on. These bees were kind of agitated, and there was what I at first took to be lots of grooming activity. I then began to be concerned about robbing as there were snooping bees around the hives, and the activity seemed more like fighting than grooming - always 2-3 bees on top of one bee. However, none of this was going on at the other hives. Reducing the entrance didn't change anything.

- over the last 10 days, it became clearer that the 'fighting' wasn't happening as bees landed (as is sometimes the case with robbers), but always involved several bees in mid struggle, dragging a bee out of the hive and onto the entrance where the 'fighting' would continue. All bees involved are workers, no drones. Often, the bee being dragged out is already dead, or all but, yet the frantic 'working over' continues for minutes. The other day I happened to look down in the grass at the foot of the hive and noticed a large number (hard to say, 100-200?) of dead bees piling up there.

- the bottom screen is completely clear of bees, so no pile up of bodies there, even after a rainy day.

[The15thMember]

I actually had a colony that was doing something similar before our weather turned cold.  Every time I went up to the apiary they were the only colony, out of 7, with a congested entrance, due to what appeared to be extreme grooming or mild fighting, but there were no signs of robbers (no bees sniffing cracks, no dead bees, and no bees actively engaged in spinning fights to the death).  It has stopped now that the bees are clustered.  I'm curious to see what people's opinions are, because I couldn't make heads or tails of it either. 

[tjc1]

Had a state bee inspector come have a look. He, too, found it curious, and took samples for a lab test, as he couldn't find signs of any kind of illness. Finally got the lab results - they do quite a work up, 19 different pathogens qPRC test! Inspector said the only thing at all of note was presence of Deformed Wing Virus - B, tho he never saw evidence of it in the hive. I guess these are just hyper hygienic bees! I'd post the full results but cannot attach a PDF as far as I can see.

[Michael Bush]

Huber documents a similar thing back in the really early 1800s.  The bees being thrown out were hairless.