[music]
So hi guys, we're back and today we are going
to talk about a few abnormal colony conditions.
We have a quite interesting colony here and then
we are going to move on and look at some of the signs
and symptoms of other sort of various things
that aren't exactly normal and sometimes you don't
actually want in your colonies and you have
to rectify the situation and we'll talk about how
to do that as well.
But first what we have here so this is actually
a double brood chamber hive that we've just split
apart so we can get into it fairly easily and show
you what's going on.
Earlier on about a month, month and a half ago
we've gone into this colony and assessed it
and what we saw at that point in time was
the queen was starting had just started to
lay drone eggs in worker sized cells, and that's
kind of the first symptom of her just starting to get
older, starting to fail, she is running out of
semen and starting to lay unfertilized eggs
where she should be laying fertilized eggs.
So that went on about a month and a half
ago maybe just a little bit before that
and now we've got to this point here and
we'll go into the colony, and what basically has
happened is she's gotten to that point where she
has actually failed and now the bees are kind
of re-working things and trying to rectify
the whole situation.
So the first thing to note is it's about 23 degrees
today and so the bees are quite spread out,
so they look like they are covering a lot of territory
in these two boxes, but it is actually
not exactly a strong colony so they might be covering
everything on the box, but they are not covering
the entirety of frames.
So it's a bit of a weaker colony,
which is just something to note, but going through
the colony the first thing we
actually are seeing here is what was kind
of the tail end of the queen bee.
So it is just getting to be a bit of a spotty brood
pattern and as I look into the box now we have
an even better frame ahead of us, so we'll
go to that one.
But kind of towards the end of her life
she was laying in a very sort of spotty brood
pattern, so yes we do have brood covering almost
the entire frame here, but it is very spotty
there are lots of cells that she has either missed
or something has failed and the bees
have cleaned it out.
So that's kind of the first sign that
yes she's gone things went even a little further
south than when we first caught her laying again
unfertilized eggs in worker sized cells.
So we are starting to see spotty brood
pattern, upon a closer inspection, it's hard
to see in the video, but we don't actually see
any eggs in here, so we know that the queen
is no longer in this colony
and what has actually started to happen,
as we look a little further,
is well not on this frame so we'll pull out the
next one, but again we are just starting to see
spotty brood pattern and no eggs in these empty cells
or anything like that.
I'll put that in and move on to the next one.
But there we go.
What we are starting to see is these bees,
when the queen finally failed they kind of
kicked into gear and started trying to rear
their own queen, so what we are seeing here
is a queen cell that they have produced and
another one here, so these are all supersedure
type cells because they are on the face of
the frame and not all hanging out at the very
bottom of the frame, and we can see they
are actually they are quite far advanced.
So if you look closely it actually has a very papery
type look to it and if you were to feel that it would
feel very sand papery, but not so much waxy.
So it is getting to the point where
these cells are almost mature
and the bees have kind of taken off that wax coating
on the bottom of that pupil case and now that
the outside of that pupil case is actually starting
to show.
So they are quite far advanced,
but just once you get the feel for how large a
queen cell is looking at these ones they are
very small they are kind of runty sized cells
I guess you could call it, and that again would
be just because this colony a little bit weaker
than some of the strong colonies, so they don't
have the resources and the population to really
produce well-rounded strong queen cells.
So we'll put that one in and keep on looking
to see what we can see in this colony.
So here again we have a bunch more queen cells
that the bees are working on.
They've got cells over here cells, down below,
cells on each side of this frame, but again
notice this spotty brood pattern
and the lack of a heck of a lot of bees on
these frames
and we see another queen cell down here
closer to the bottom.
Now we did notice on an earlier inspection as well
that the bees had actually started to
tear down some queen cells.
So if you can see here we actually have three queen
cells right here, they actually built them really
close together, so we have two up above that
are still intact and again have that kind of
papery look to them, but down below the
bees have actually started to rip down this cell
and the difference between a queen emerging
and hatching from a cell and the bees starting
to rip the cell apart is the type of opening
that you see on that cell.
If the opening was torn through the side of the
cell, that's a very obvious sign that it is
actually the worker bees that have gone in there.
If the queen were to emerge from one of these
cells there would be a very definite smooth small
circular cut right at the base of that cell
and what we are seeing here is everything just being torn
apart, there's little harry bits of that pupil
casing kind of thrown here and there, not a
very clean look to it so that is basically
a sign that the worker bees have actually
torn that cell apart.
Basically what's happened is the larva wasn't fed
enough or the larva was too old and would
never develop into a queen,
but the bees have sensed that this
is basically a failed queen cell and
torn that apart and been done with that.
So we've pretty much seen everything there is to see
in this colony, there is no queen, there is
evidence of when the queen in her final days
what she was doing, so right now we are at
a juncture.
So at home you could possibly let
these queen cells all develop, fully hatch
out, there will be a bunch of virgins in this
colony and they'll sort it out and
eventually be left with one and she'll go
out and mate and you'll again kind of have
a fully functional colony, but if you have
the resources the best idea is to put in,
go through and destroy all these queen cells
and then put in a queen cell that you've either
purchased or reared yourself, that way you
are more sure of the genetics that you are
going to be putting in that colony with the queen,
and what also is going to happen is
when you produce these queen cells or buy them
those queen cells have been produced
and are large, full, strong queens
that will hatch out of there.
These ones here they are a little more runty
as we talked about, so they will generally
produce a more physically inferior
queen, so that is also something to kinda
keep track of, but we are going to go the route of
going through this colony, destroying those cells
and introducing a queen cell that we have reared.
She'll go out and mate and we've basically
rectified that situation by putting in a brand
new queen.
So that's what happens when you have a queen
that is starting to fail and has gone to
this sort of stage and those are kind of the two routes
you can use to sort of settle that problem.
What's actually over here is signs and symptoms
of chalk brood.
So we don't actually have any physical chalk
brood inside this colony, we have evaluated that,
but what you can see in the signs and symptoms
of chalk brood are these little white
and black mummies that have basically is
failed brood that has been mummified by fungus.
And the bees, so these are actually in the cells
of the colony, and then the brood dies
and then gets covered in this fungus,
but when the bees finally get over and are able to
deal with these they will chew them up
and spit them outside the colony.
So very good signs and symptoms of chalk brood
are these little mummy casings that have fallen
right out in front of the colony.
Sometimes you can see them in the front
entrance of a colony and we don't exactly
see that here, but there are lots of these little
mummies just sitting out in front of the colony.
So we won't get into too much about what chalk
brood is, you can do more reading on that, but if
you just have a good look at what this looks like that's
what we are trying to get across here.