# General beekeeping > Bee health >  Dead bees from apidea

## Jon

One of my apideas is chucking out an above average number of dead bees.
These look like varroa and virus damaged bees to me.
short abdomens, shiny black, tongues out.

dead-bees-from-apidea1.jpg dead-bees-from-apidea3.jpg dead-bees-from-apidea2.jpg

They look fully formed but stunted. I wonder are the bees uncapping these from cells or can they detect a damaged bee once it has emerged and expel it.

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## The Drone Ranger

might as well have a look in there to see whats going on Jon 
When you say apidea is this a stack of apideas ?

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## Jon

Just the one which is a double.
I am guessing that most of the mites in there entered the final patch of brood and severely damaged it.
I'll have a look in over the next day or two.

I tricked it with a few drops of Oxalic today.

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## Pete L

Jon, do you treat your mini nucs with anything earlier,like late August.

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## Jon

Sometimes I do but treated none this year. Mite counts in general have been very low.
I sampled a lot of full colonies by taking a sample of 300 bees and using a sugar shaker to dislodge mites and count them.
Most of them had under 2% infestation.

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## The Drone Ranger

If varroa are there one or two might drop out onto paper if the plastic sliding floor is withdrawn and put back 
That won't disturb them much (and any dead bees will be lying on there as well)
Have you considered these http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/New-12V-He...item58a51f7b2b
In colder climates they are apparently used for full sized hives
Might help with tiny colonies ?

heater.jpg

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## Jon

It is a pretty strong apidea.
Second from the left top row.

The main thing is to have enough bees in  there so heating should not be such a problem.
Finman uses those heaters.

This is the equipment I use to sample the rate of varroa infestation.
I don't trust the mite drop on the inserts.

varroa-sampling-equipment-small.jpg varroa-sampling-returning-bees-small.jpg

Take a sample of 300 bees from the brood nest, add icing sugar, shake for two minutes then shake over a pot of water.
The mites which have been dislodged float on the surface.

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## The Drone Ranger

Sadly I have had to chastise others for using the name of the Dark Lord so please show restraint we dont want an influx of the deranged 
Actually though off the topic slightly The Beekeeping Forum is really good now 
The moderators have put their foot down and the whole atmosphere has changed 

That  hive does look nice and busy so probably will do fine if the queen is laying to replace the dead ones
As you have said elsewhere though you need a certain critical mass to cover any little patch of brood and maintain temperature
As soon as that can't be done then the queen can't lay no matter how much she wants to
That's the downward spiral that sees them dwindling and dying out in Spring I think

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## The Drone Ranger

Re the varroa sampling I don't suppose you plan doing that with the apidea Jon it might do more harm than good

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## Jon

Not sensible with an apidea although the bees should be unharmed.
I like to try an overwinter a few.
Sometimes it works, sometimes not.

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## susbees

Thanks for the heads up Jon....reminding me to winterize my high rise apideas and check their feed. This winterising's been a bit topsy turvy with one thing and another. Had some CBPV II here last winter in a colony...shiny bees etc but can't see the thoraxes on your sunny pics to see how mauled/bald they are.

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## Pete L

I  am only over wintering ten poly nucs this winter, they are kielers, and i hate the things, so this will be the last time i use them... I said this last year.. :Smile: 

Just got home from putting these kielers into empty brood boxes, on top of strong colonies, surrounded by cedar shavings and topped off with an insulated roof. All the rest of my mini nucs are in cedar four way boxes.  I tend to use a third of a strip of Apivar (cut length ways) in the mini nucs if needed, they don't tolerate thymol well being so small.

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## Jon

> can't see the thoraxes on your sunny pics to see how mauled/bald they are.


A lot of them are black and shiny which combined with the short abdomens suggests varroa and virus damage.
Mine are well fed at this stage as I have been feeding them thymolated syrup for several weeks now.

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## fatshark

Looking at the wings - most of which are intact - I don't think that deformed wing virus is the culprit here. These also tend to still be reasonably hairy. If they are shiny then susbees might well be right and they might be suffering from chronic bee paralysis virus. Are they even blacker than expected?

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## Jon

> Are they even blacker than expected?


Yep.

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## mbc

I would say a touch of CBPV  is a good call.

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## gavin

> ....reminding me to winterize my high rise apideas


You're gonna what them?!!

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## fatshark

An Americanism? Winterise perhaps?

 :Wink:

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## Jon

Reminds me of Beefheart. Booglarize those Apideas.

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## Jon

> I would say a touch of CBPV  is a good call.


Is short abdomen associated with the virus or is that due to the mite sucking the haemolymph from the pupa?

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## gavin

A broad or bloated abdomen, filled with liquid, is supposed to be associated with CBPV so perhaps when they dry out they look shortened?  Them darn CBPVized abdomens.

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## Jon

These ones weren't dry. Some of them were still twitching.
The bees must detect that they are defective in some way and dispatch them.

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## gavin

Pesticides!

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## Jon

abdomen stunting pesticides?

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## gavin

Should have been a winking smiley on that last post.  I'm not being helpful.

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## Jon

Got the joke just continuing the nonsense as is my wont!

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## gavin

You could try a Nosema test (again a spot of bloating is possible, send me some if you don't have a microscope) although I think CBPV is more likely. Worth looking for Acarine too, it was common enough here last winter. They may, of course, have a combination.  A twitchy death sounds like a virus that infects ganglia, ie CBPV.

Ah ... twas me that needed to see a winking smiley!

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## Jon

Don't look nosemic to me. Those ones tend to be bloated and crawling. CBPV sounds more likely. I have seen the odd bee like that from time to time but never in any significant quantity.
It will be interesting to monitor that apidea as it has 10 frames well covered with bees at the moment.
I gave it a few drops of Oxalic today.
Does that virus spread from bee to bee once they have emerged?

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## gavin

Experimentally through the oral route and, less effectively, across the cuticle.  Adult bees, 5-6 days to show symptoms.

http://www.mdpi.com/1999-4915/5/9/2282
I Toplak et al - ‎2013
*Chronic Bee Paralysis Virus and Nosema ceranae Experimental Co-Infection of Winter Honey Bee Workers (Apis mellifera L.)
*

Although there are people reading this who'll know *much* more than a quick Google of mine will reveal ....

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## Jon

Some stuff on the DEFRA site as well

https://secure.fera.defra.gov.uk/bee...cfm?pageid=275




> CBPV mainly attacks adult bees and causes two forms of ‘‘paralysis’’ symptoms in bees. The most common one is characterized by an abnormal trembling of the body and wings, crawling on the ground due to the flight inability, bloated abdomens, and dislocated wings. The other form is identified by the presence of hairless, shiny, and black-appearing bees that are attacked and rejected from returning to the colonies at the entrance of the hives by guard bees.

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## fatshark

The second definition is the one I'm more familiar with  these are the ones you see shivering on the top bar when you lift the crown board. Bloated abdomens aren't the first characteristic I'd associate with CBPV so I was was interested to read the DEFRA piece.  I've only seen one really bad colony with it and they didn't make it through the winter.  Perhaps I hadn't winterized them enough?  :Wink:  

This is the sort of thing I'd expect 

6a00d83455b58069e2011570f6c029970b-500wi.jpg

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## Jon

Mine definitely have short-ass abdomens as well as the shinyness.

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## mbc

'Winterising' round here is a description of fleecing summer visitors of £60 for giving their outboard motors a quick squirt of wd40 in the Autumn. 

CBPV is an odd malady, sometimes colonies shake it off and are as productive as the others, sometimes it seems to linger on and make a colony unviable.  I think its probably best to change the queens from any colonies that suffer.
In my experience, it is not particularly associated with varroa.

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## Jon

> In my experience, it is not particularly associated with varroa.


In the sense that it is not associated with a high mite count or what do you mean exactly?

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## greengumbo

Hi Jon - have you done a quick acarine check on those bees ? CPBV has been linked to acarine by some although there is not much evidence out there.

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## Jon

Acarine is very unusual around these parts and these bees are not like the crawlers you get with acarine.
The short abdomens says mite damage to me.
I don't know what else could cause that.

If anyone wants the bees for analysis I can post them.

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## The Drone Ranger

Could it be faulty nutrition or a lack of some element in the feeding of the larva ?

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## Jon

Hi Kitta, I would tend to agree that most are at least a day or two old as opposed to bees recently dragged from cells.
The reason I thought that was that quite a few have the tongue sticking out which is something you often see in varroa damaged brood, bees fully formed which have started to emerge from the cell but failed to get out.
They must be too weak or too damaged by the mites to emerge properly.

This sort of thing
scan0003-2.jpg




> Could it be faulty nutrition or a lack of some element in the feeding of the larva ?


Don't think so DR.
There has been an abundance of ivy pollen coming in since the end of September and I have been feeding syrup to the apideas for the past month. They are all heavy.

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## Mellifera Crofter

Oops Jon - sorry I deleted my post.  As soon as I posted it I realised that the thread is longer than I had thought, and I had not read through it all, so I deleted it.  I've reached the end now.  For others who might be wondering: in my deleted post I just wondered how young the bees in the first photographs were.
Kitta

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## The Drone Ranger

inbreeding ?  :Smile: 
(not recommending it)

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## Jon

> inbreeding


Not with a open mated queen and anyway that one is from a non Galtee line which is unrelated to most of my drone producing colonies.

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## The Drone Ranger

> Not with a open mated queen and anyway that one is from a non Galtee line which is unrelated to most of my drone producing colonies.


Lol 
possible an adaptation to varroa with lethal side effects
(don't give them an abdomen to feed on)

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## Feckless Drone

Is there a place where testing for a virus would be carried out? Just to post in some bees mushed up in alcohol and by PCR look for some specific sequence.
Would SASA help? Maybe not routine so might be interesting. With such good documentation of the problem it would be nice to define the cause.

Jon - surprised to see you still feeding syrup. When do you typically do this? and is this also for full colonies? I thought it was best to get feeding done by late Sept - early Oct. But, then your climate would be a tad milder than Tayside I guess.

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## fatshark

Old, but nevertheless interesting  CBPV presence is not related to mite infestation (supporting the statement by mbc above):

Ball, B. V., and M. F. Allen. 1988. The prevalence of pathogens in honeybee (Apis mellifera) colonies infested with the parasitic mite Varroa jacobsoni. Ann. Appl. Biol. 113:237-244.

and pupae are free of CBPV in otherwise CBPV-containing and mite-infested colonies:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...?report=reader

i.e. CBPV is transmitted horizontally, either by direct contact or via faeces (feces?!):

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...MC2168079/#r33

which brings us back to one of the earlier posts by gavin (not the pesticide one  :Wink: )

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## The Drone Ranger

> I thought it was best to get feeding done by late Sept - early Oct. But, then your climate would be a tad milder than Tayside I guess.


7.0C outside today 7.2kph wind 1006.4hpa  forcast moving toward sunny
I have a weather station  :Smile: 
Inside temp 13.5 ?? where is global warming when I need it

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## Jon

> Jon - surprised to see you still feeding syrup. When do you typically do this? and is this also for full colonies? I thought it was best to get feeding done by late Sept - early Oct. But, then your climate would be a tad milder than Tayside I guess.


I do most of my syrup feeding on full colonies mid September to mid October.
If you feed too early and fill the brood box you miss the chance to rear a lot of brood with the ivy pollen.
my queens tend to stop laying in late August/early September and then have a final blast when the ivy is in flower from late September on.
The apideas are still taking a bit, albeit slowly now.

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## Jon

Ok. Just has a look in the apidea.
There were a lot of dead bees on the floor, maybe 80-100, some shiny black, many with short abdomens.
Apidea still has a decent size population, maybe 1000+ bees.
The bees on the combs looked normal. One was normal enough to sting me on the wrist!
Brood present on 3 frames including v small larvae, didn't see eggs or queen but I did not check all frames.
No obvious signs of varroa damaged brood and no mites seen on the floor. I tricked Oxalic yesterday.
No signs of dysentery such as in a nosema outbreak

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## The Drone Ranger

Well if varroa were there in any numbers some would be down on the floor
the oxalic treatment might produce some dead ones over the next few days
They are replacing the dead bees -- there are enough bees to cover the brood 
You can relax a bit now and get the microscope out  :Smile:

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## Jon

Does not look like varroa is a big factor but what causes those short abdomens?

fatshark, that paper about transmission of CBPV via bee faeces was very interesting.
Might be beneficial to transfer the frames into a clean apidea.
Would acetic fumigation be effective to rid equipment of CBPV traces?

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## Mellifera Crofter

> ... No obvious signs of varroa damaged brood and no mites seen on the floor.  ...


SBPV can remain in the colonies long after the mites have disappeared causing colony collapse late in the year (Celia Davis).  Might the same be possible for CBPV?
Kitta

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## Jon

I only treated this one with Oxalic yesterday though, so if it had mites they would be on the increase rather than disappearing.

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## fatshark

I'd be pretty sure that abdominal stunting is nothing to do with mites siphoning out the haemolymph  almost certainly it will reflect gross changes in developmental gene expression triggered by the virus (or in the case of CBPV, in the newly emerged worker). There's a helluva lot going on and the virus throws a real spanner in the works, converting individual cells into factories for virus replication and triggering systemic responses which - frankly - bu*ger everything up). What's the highest mite load you've ever seen in a single cell? 5 or 6 perhaps, more usually 3 or less. I doubt that number have the capacity (I accept they'll "use" some of it for growth as well) to account for the smaller volume of the abdomen. 

Gavin will probably pop up with a paper citing the haemolymph volume of mite-exposed and unexposed pupae  and whoever wrote that paper is surely someone to avoid at a dinner party.

CBPV has not been fully classified yet  however, treatment with acid appears to generate empty particles (which might be expected to be non-infectious):

http://vir.sgmjournals.org/content/2/2/251.short

though I'm not aware of anyone testing infectivity of these preparations. If you've got any Virkon that is sure to work.

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## Jon

I have virkon tablets as well as acetic acid.

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## greengumbo

> I'd be pretty sure that abdominal stunting is nothing to do with mites siphoning out the haemolymph  almost certainly it will reflect gross changes in developmental gene expression triggered by the virus (or in the case of CBPV, in the newly emerged worker). There's a helluva lot going on and the virus throws a real spanner in the works, converting individual cells into factories for virus replication and triggering systemic responses which - frankly - bu*ger everything up). What's the highest mite load you've ever seen in a single cell? 5 or 6 perhaps, more usually 3 or less. I doubt that number have the capacity (I accept they'll "use" some of it for growth as well) to account for the smaller volume of the abdomen. 
> 
> Gavin will probably pop up with a paper citing the haemolymph volume of mite-exposed and unexposed pupae  and whoever wrote that paper is surely someone to avoid at a dinner party.
> 
> CBPV has not been fully classified yet  however, treatment with acid appears to generate empty particles (which might be expected to be non-infectious):
> 
> http://vir.sgmjournals.org/content/2/2/251.short
> 
> though I'm not aware of anyone testing infectivity of these preparations. If you've got any Virkon that is sure to work.


Hey FS - i've been quoting this old paper for a wee while, there are no doubt others and better studies.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/apido:19850407

no mites per cell 100% volume (115ul)
1-3 mites  - 23% (88.23ul)
4-6 mites - 40% (69ul)

This is on worker brood. Seems a fair reduction in volume !

Yes people avoid me at dinner parties  :Wink:

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## Jon

I have removed the bottom apidea and floor and replaced it with a clean one.
The old one is soaking in virkon
I got some better pics as well.
I tipped the debris and bees on to a piece of correx and could not find a single mite.

apidea-virus-bee-tongue-small.jpg apidea-virus-bee-shiny-small.jpg apidea-virus-floor-contents-small.jpg apidea-virus-floor.jpg

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## The Drone Ranger

> Hey FS - i've been quoting this old paper for a wee while, there are no doubt others and better studies.
> 
> http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/apido:19850407
> 
> no mites per cell 100% volume (115ul)
> 1-3 mites  - 23% (88.23ul)
> 4-6 mites - 40% (69ul)
> 
> This is on worker brood. Seems a fair reduction in volume !
> ...


Blinking good read 

That's exactly what I would have said if I had known anything about the subject

By the way your safe from me -- What is a dinner party ??

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## busybeephilip

Looks like starvation.  the recent cold snap probably got them. stirr

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## busybeephilip

So what do the frames look like ? Hardly any stores?

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## Jon

Don't be daft Phil. There are about 3k of stores in it.

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## busybeephilip

3 kg in an apidea  ?

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## Jon

10 frames

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## busybeephilip

One of life's little conundrums

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## busybeephilip

As you think a virus, but many are endemic, someone could set up a quick PCR assay for this !

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## busybeephilip

Primers are published for a wide range of bee viruses, your sample might be too degraded by now to extract good quality RNA  - they have been poisoned

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## fatshark

Hell's teeth GreenGumbo  you really need to get out a bit more.

A very interesting read. I'm really surprised by the haemolymph volume reductions. However, I still don't think it's as straightforward as the mites just siphoning it off  if you look at the figures for the worker and drones with low (1-3) or high (4-6) mite levels and work out the volume/mite it's highly variable:

Workers
Low mites (assumed 2) = 13.5ul/mite
High mites (assumed 5) = 9.2ul/mite

Drones
Low mites (assumed 2) = 16ul/mite
High mites (assumed 5) = 7.2ul/mite

Unless I'm missing something obvious (and it wouldn't be the first time) the more mites are present the less haemolymph is 'taken' *per mite*. Now, unless there are a bunch of hungry mites loitering in the cell (and there's quite a bit of haemolymph left - in the case of drones almost as much with 5 mites present as uninfected workers) this suggests that haemolymph reduction, and therefore presumably abdominal stunting if some sort of hydrostatic pressure is responsible for a fat abdomen, is indirectly caused by infestation. Perhaps each mite delivers something that triggered this reduction - virus, salivary peptides, er, virus (I have no imagination) - and there is a threshold of whatever it is above which the pupa is unresponsive?

Who knows? Well actually, considering your recommended reading material, you probably do!

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## gavin

> Hell's teeth GreenGumbo … you really need to get out a bit more.


Don't worry, in recent months I've made sure he's been out at least three times!  However for two of them he brought his dad, so maybe you're right .....

I'm starting to feel sorry for these undernourished mites.  It is about time someone came up with an artificial system to feed mites I reckon.

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## gavin

> I got some better pics as well.


That second one resembles classic CBPV.

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## The Drone Ranger

One of 4 mini nucs down already 
Queen not laying 
Little dead patch bees with her in middle dead

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## Jon

What killed it DR?
Cold night/not enough bees?

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## The Drone Ranger

> What killed it DR?
> Cold night/not enough bees?


It was made up of 2 apideas and a Swienty mating nuc
The 2 apidea bees got together in the bottom 
The swienty was on top and those bees just stayed separate in the top
The queen looked ok but wasn't laying so I think they just ignored her
I left it too late to combine them all 
The soft kitchen roll paper between the boxes was left intact between the top and the other two (more or less)

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## Jon

Feckless Drone kindly offered to chop up a few bee heads from a sample I sent him and this was the result.
I'll leave it to the forum virus geeks to comment.

EM-virus.jpg

The sample came from an apidea, second from the left, top row.
It still seems fine in spite of the loss of bees.
It was bringing in pollen this morning.

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## gavin

> Feckless Drone kindly offered to chop up a few bee heads from a sample I sent him and this was the result.


LOL!  I think that the car headlights we're seeing blasting into that snowstorm with the giant snowflakes is rapidly approaching a man in the road.  He should have known better than to be out walking in that sort of weather.

Jessie Smith's spirit as channelled through her grandson interpreting fuzzy EM pics done after the support staff went home, could be a new SBAi highlight.  

Any chance FD could twirl the focussing knob a wee bit next time?  And add a wee ruler to the preparation?  I'm no virologist (apart from knowing a few that give me the sniffles in the winter and that make tattie leaves go yellowing and crinkly) but it does have a CBPV look about it, doesn't it?  With just a few IAPV there too to liven things up (quarantine that man's apiary!).

Here's CBPV (about 20nm across) from a paper by Chevin et al (2012):

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## busybeephilip

jon, about time to give yer bees a wee hot toddy, yerself too then ya wont feel the cold on that there owl bike, right mucker

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## Jon

Virus or no virus, this apidea is still alive and that includes a 5 foot drop on Friday afternoon when its shelf collapsed.

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