Beekeeping is Good!

I first noticed bees with deformed wings virus(DWV) crawling around in front of one of our stronger hives in the late summer of last year.

Photo by: Shawn Caza

By spring symptoms had dissapeared. It was the strongest of our twenty hives this spring and we had to split it to try and keep it from swarming. By late summer(Sept. 1st) I once again started noticing bees with deformed wings. From this point in the season on, anytime I looked, I was able to find at least one if not a handful of damaged bees crawling around in the area directly in front of this one hive.

Photo by: Shawn Caza

Notice the mite on the bee in the above photo. Mites are believed to help transmit DWV and be the cause of more severe infections as they harbour a much higher concentration of the virus than is found in the bees themselves.

Bees with deformed wings are expelled from the hive and typically have a life span under 48 hours. One beekeeper I met claims he always sees them gathering at a distance of several meters away from the hive. I'll have to confirm this with my bees next season.

I find it interesting that although most if not all of our hives have mites, I haven't seen bees with deformed wings in front of other hives. Perhaps there are just more bees getting infected in the stronger hive and the numbers makes it easier for me to spot them? Experts from our provincial beekeeping association have assured me that if it's in one hive it is present in all hives even if the visible symptoms are not present. I was also told that a Queen with the virus could make the symptoms more pronounced in a particular hive.

Update: The hive with DWV didn't make it through another winter. We're already spotting bees inside different hives with DWV this spring.