BCBC would like to thank
Dr. Zachary Huang, Associate Professor of Entomology, Michigan State University for allowing us to republish his honeybee photos and photo descriptions here. Please visit his site at Beetography.com
Special thanks also to
Dr. David Tarpy, Assistant Professor of Entomology at NCSU for allowing us to republish information on bee pests and treatments. You can visit his site here.
A healthy colony with a young queen should produce brood like this. While the brood is healthy, this is a typical pattern of capping. Have you seen anything different? The next photo explains why. Well, this capping is not 'normal' or 'usual'. Notice the rosette pattern? one normal looking brood cell was surrounded by six sunken cells. Normal brood should all look like the center cell. After seeing this in my observation colony, I was betting with my lab members that there were probably no brood in these sunken cells. I was wrong! there were normal worker pupae in all cells. Genetic? when the colony swarmed, I harvested it and the same queen produced similar pattern in the new colony! I should have saved a frame in the freezer and could have published another paper...Prof. Randall Hepburn (South Africa) has written a book on wax of bees and showed many strange patterns but he has not seen this type either. He did see rosette patterns before, but usually the center cell is a 'false' cell (no larva). Here all cells have larvae. MSU observation hive, May 3, 2000. Note, I have discovered (on June 3rd, 2003, three years and one month later...) another queen is doing this again, in the same observation hive! We will try to 'study' what causes these wierd cappings to occur.-- Zachary Huang Brood of Apis mellifera uncapped by workers. Pupae seem to develop normally within these uncapped cells. The significance of this is not clear. Some think bees maybe uncapping the cells when they detect varroa mites there. It is true also in Apis cerana this phenomenon is more common, where varroa is not a problem. MSU apiary. July 17, 2002. A frame of brood that is not so healthy. The white stuff in cells are chalkbrood mummies. This colony is probably infected with chalkbrood, possibly also brood disease (AFB or EFB), and perhaps also varroa mites. When varroa mite infection is severe, it often causes frames like this, which is called bee PMS (parasitic mite syndrome). Photo by Prof. M.V. Smith, University of Guelph.
