Poisoning

[Jon]

One of my colonies had several hundred dead or dying bees at the entrance this afternoon.
Most of them had their tongues sticking out which is a classic symptom of poisoning.
Any guesses as to what the cause might be?

( If this were biobees.com someone would post Imidicloprid within 2 minutes!)

There can't be much spraying going on at this time of year.
Only one colony was affected.
My colonies are on allotments but I can't think what anyone would be spraying at the moment other than the usual suspects with Roundup and I can't see that affecting bees.
I doubt if the bees are collecting water at the moment as they is a big flow of Ivy nectar and they are driving moisture from the hives.

I took a sample of 100 bees and put it in the freezer.

[Stromnessbees]

Maybe somebody killed off a feral colony by spraying insecticide into it and your bees robbed their stores?

Is the remainder of your colony still viable?

Doris

[Jon]

It's one of my strongest so I think it should be OK. it's hard to know how many bees were lost in the field though.
I checked it and the queen was fine and there were 5 frames of sealed brood.
It's a bad time of the year to lose any bees, although I imagine the victims were mainly older forager bees who would have died shortly anyway.
Luckily just one colony seems to be affected out of about 20 on the site.

[gavin]

These folks: http://www.afbini.gov.uk/

may be willing to look at samples for you. It might be a way to learn what happened and try to stop it happening again. We would ask SASA for the same thing.

[Stromnessbees]

http://www.afbini.gov.uk/

looks like a good organisation -
this is their honeybee husbandry survey 08/09 http://www.afbini.gov.uk/honeybee-hu...y-results.pdf:
e. g. of the 94 beekeepers in the survey 20 % imported bees/queens. (p7)

... How much would an analysis of poisoned bees cost?

Doris

[gavin]

I would hope that it would be free, considering that it may be part of an investigation into illegal use of pesticides. Don't think that SASA would charge for this sort of investigation.

This queen importing business needs challenged. People have just got to accept that it is unsustainable and damaging.

[Neils]

I'm still amazed at the number of beekeepers that I thought "would know better" who import queens.

[Jon]

Hi Gavin. I just checked your link and see that is for Newforge. I live about a mile away from their premises so very handy.
I collected a cast swarm from the garden of one of their employees this year.
I remember chatting to him about pesticides and he said they do test bees for pesticide residue.

EDIT
I phoned up earlier today and they can't in fact test bees for pesticides so back to the drawing board with that one.
They do however test for nosema and acarine and are keen for samples so that has encouraged me to sample a few colonies and get a snapshot of what is going on in my Apiary.

[Jon]

I dropped in 5 samples at lunchtime today for nosema and tracheal mite testing.
I just got a phone call from the lab and they have let me know that they can now test for pesticide poisoning as well although they usually only do this on birds and other wildlife which may have been poisoned.
The guy doing the testing is the neighbour I mentioned above who had the cast swarm in his garden. Small world.

[chris]

So Jon, what was the verdict of the testing?