A Growing Concern
It's been a busy summer and fall, with much travel, and less time for my usual gardening, beekeeping and blogging. Finally getting caught up on garden chores, I went to check the bees this weekend since we had a bit of nice weather. Unfortunately, the new was not good. Here is this year's bee story, [...]
How can half the bees in my hive already be heavily infected by nosema cerenae, yet the colony is strong, putting stores in the honey supers in April and at risk of a swarm? Nevertheless, this is how it is. This is the same colony that presented me with Chilly Bees last year but recovered [...]
Parasites and their hosts live a delicate dance. If the parasite kills the host, it may lose its habitat and perish as well, so most parasite-host relationships develop such that the parasite is a nuisance, but not life threatening to the host. The problem we have with our bees at the moment, is that the most troublesome parasites [...]
The warm stretch of weather last week provided an opportunity to look in on the bees. Two of my three hives are doing well, with bees filling at least a full brood super and generally a healthy appearance. The other hive, the one that was strongest last year, is suffering. It appears to have the now all-too-common symptoms of [...]
Parasitic Mite Syndrome (PMS) is the destructive combination of mites, viruses, and general malaise that can overcome a colony with a high mite load. At first glance some of the symptoms of PMS can look a lot like foulbrood disease. I ran into this last week. The hive in question started last spring as a [...]
