Good to see you back, always interesting
Good to see you back, always interesting
Hi Eric
Nice to see you back on here
There is some work being done with leafcutter bees and a google for them and chalkbrood will turn up quite a lot of stuff
Unfortunately there doesn't seem to have been much progress on that front either as far as I can tell
They tend to go down the chemical route like in the PDF below
http://www.saspa.com/PDF/05.%20Chalk...ing%20Bees.pdf
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Many thanks for your kind words!
The work on Megachile has been ongoing for many years in Canada and the health successes are reassuring. Amazing how resilient these bees are - the industrial scale of the cocoon selection process is remarkable. The things we subject our pollinators too!
Interesting to read peoples experiences on Chalkbrood.
I'm a novice beekeeper in Brisbane and I can give you an Australian perspective on this.
I bought a 6 frame NUC 5 weeks ago and new hive. I checked the hive after 2 weeks and all seemed fine. Prior to the inspection we had 7 straights days of teaming rain with higher than usual humidity.
The day after the inspection I noticed debris at the entrance to the hive, which turned out to be chalkbrood. The succeeding days saw more and more mummies deposited at the front of the hive, which I cleaned daily. The supplier of the nuc and hive has never had chalkbrood and the queen is only 6 months old so I have to assume the hive picked up the chalkbrood fungus from pollen in my area.
I was advised to increase ventilation to the hive, which I did by slightly raising the cover. After a week I lowered the cover again.
I did a 2nd inspection yesterday which was 4 weeks from hive creation. The floor of the hive was littered with mummies and debris. I cleaned off the floor as best I could without upsetting the bees too much.
There was no additional comb since the first inspection, ie the 4 empty frames of the 10 frame brood still hadn't been touched. I guess the bees are too busy with the chalkbrood to build any further.
There doesn't seem to be any more bees from the 1st inspection which I would have expected. There are however more bees foraging than at the start.
I've been told to sugar feed to stimulate the queen to lay more but haven't tried it as yet. I've also been told to use the banana trick.
I'm not sure what the best option is but if anyone has some suggestions I'd be keen to read them.
Cheers
Last edited by Drummo; 02-02-2015 at 05:02 AM.
Seems like you're in the same time zone as Neil! Welcome, Drummo.
First of all, I doubt very much that the previous owner saw no chalkbrood. It will have come with the bees and frames. You *might* have a queen with a propensity to chalkbrood, or the current problems might be exacerbated by something that's happened to them. Chilling is the thing that sets off chalkbrood. I wonder whether the process of making or shifting the nuc has left them depleted of bees? That would cause a slow build-up and difficulty maintaining temperature.
Try not to open them when it is cool and keep your visits short. Do feed them syrup to help them build. In the longer term, replace old frames. Assess in the months to come whether the chalkbrood is still excessive and if so then requeen f you can.
Six months or six weeks? If months she would have emerged some time in August when the average temperature (the internet tells me) is about 9C. Is it possible for a queen to emerge so early in the season? And if six weeks then you received her when she was a week old and would not have had time to lay a nucleus-worth of bees - so it would have been a put-together nucleus, and Gavin is probably right in that case: that they suffered from a bee shortage and could not keep warm. I'm just curious.
Over here people aren't to keen on raising the crown board to increase ventilation because you get cold drafts through the hive. An open mesh floor is better.I was advised to increase ventilation to the hive, which I did by slightly raising the cover. After a week I lowered the cover again.
You're right - your post made me reread the thread again: it is interesting.
Kitta
Thanks for the replies, the advice and the welcome
The guy I bought the hive from seemed like a very genuine guy. He has 3 hives of his own and has called me a couple of times since I bought the nuc to see how things are going. He said he had seen chalkbrood when a friend had it but hadn't had it in his hives and so couldn't help me much. He did suggest sugar feeding. He also said that he would give me more bees if I needed them.
I know that he put the nuc together in the afternoon and I picked up the hive that evening so yes it was a put together nucleus.
'Cool' here at the moment is a relative term. On both days I opened the hive it was 32C plus. I have only opened the hive twice.
Will start sugar feeding this afternoon and see how that goes.
I'll check with the supplier of the hive when the Queen was actually born but I think he said May, which would be the end of the season in Brisbane. The six months is wrong but that's just my inability to keep up with the fact that it's already 2015. I'm still stuck back in mid 2014.
Cheers
If nucs are created in an apiary and left there many of the flying bees return home. You get a nuc with the house bees that were left on the frames, sealed and open brood, and most of the older bees gone with not enough bees (or nectar brought in) to keep everything warm. When I've made that mistake in cold summers I've seen chilled brood around the edges of the comb (or worse). Once I've made mistakes like that 2-3 times I usually get the message! There are things you can do to mitigate this: shaking in more young bees from other frames (doesn't always work, sometimes they go home), sealing in for a few days (ditto), moving the parent hive off to the side and putting nuc(s) in their place to catch the fliers, and/or taking the nuc away to a second apiary (you might have lost the fliers before you sealed them in).
Sounds like the guy you got them from was not that experienced. Feed them and they will pick up slowly. With any luck and given your climate chalkbrood may decline to an insignificant problem as the colony strengthens.
Thanks Gavin;
What you've related seems to fit pretty well with my scenario. I know the seller had the nuc sealed in the new hive when I arrived so I'm thinking he did the right thing.
There were no more mummies yesterday so maybe things are picking up.
I have another query, I put sugar syrup out yesterday and the bees have shown no interest in it at all. I didn't want to open the hive so I've put it on top of the hive.
I put the syrup out again this morning and still no interest from the bees. I thought they would have been all over it. Is there any reason why they would ignore the syrup?
I used a half cup of water to a half cup of sugar.
Bee feeders are designed to be placed inside the hive, in an empty box. If you have an open container place it in an empty brood box or super but with floats of some kind to stop them drowning. Leaving it out risks encouraging robbing. G.
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