Dead bees from apidea

[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?

This is the sort of thing I'd expect …

6a00d83455b58069e2011570f6c029970b-500wi.jpg

[Jon]

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

[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.

[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?

[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.

[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.

[The Drone Ranger]

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

[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.

[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

[The Drone Ranger]

inbreeding ?
(not recommending it)