10 frames
10 frames
One of life's little conundrums
As you think a virus, but many are endemic, someone could set up a quick PCR assay for this !
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
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!
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 .....Originally Posted by fatshark
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.
That second one resembles classic CBPV.
One of 4 mini nucs down already
Queen not laying
Little dead patch bees with her in middle dead
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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