Originally Posted by
Calluna4u
To my eye there is nothing especially sinister there.
The comb madasafish refers to looks to me to only be a partially robbed out frame of heather stores (you can see the right colour and consistency of remaining honey).
The dysentery is actually only very mild and looks like stress related.
The residual cluster is actually tiny.
The dead bees on the floor only reflect how tiny the colony had become and how far from the active bees they were, so no particular ability or need or morale for housecleaning.
Especially in heather areas there will be a lot of this at the end of this winter.
Suggested diagnosis is that your colony ended up, for whatever reason, queenless or with a virgin in it some time after mid summer last year. It probably never totally settled as a result and the bees remaining in it were all getting pretty old. Late heather working accelerated burnout.
So you arrive at today where the colony has expired, dead bees all over the floor (were possibly scattered around the perimeter adjacent to the crown board too.) The stores it had became the target of other colonies in the vicinity, but as it is not totally robbed the activity has been sporadic. You probably thought it was flying well at some stages late last year.
Nosema in particular can flare up in a stress situation and your sample may show this. Viruses can be found everywhere but there is nothing to indicate this being a virus death, though one of the paralysis viruses may have played a role.
The chewed super comb is the result of one of two things.........the bees tidying up after wax moth....or starving isolated bees at that spot chewing away at anything, especially if there were crystallised stores there.
Either clean out sterilise and rewax the combs, or sterilise with acetic acid fumes and just refill with bees in summer. Your combs are actually in good condition if perhaps becoming a little dark.
But as always........if in doubt check it out.......the inspectors are very friendly.
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