Common Bee Diseases: To tell you the truth, I didn't even know that bees could get diseases. Not only can they get diseases but they are so many types that can happen. Keeping your bee hive clean is obviously extremely important on making sure that your bees have healthy and longer lives.
Id would love to look through the hive we have at our school just to make sure everything is clean and no diseases are found. I doubt we would find anything but it would be cool just to look and see if we found anything abnormal.
Colony Collapse Disorder: I find this so interesting because the bees literally drop everything they are doing and essentially disappear. You would think that if all the bees left, then the queen would leave with them but that's not actually what happens. If you look into a hive and see that the queen is gone and all the bees are gone, then that's usually a sign that the queen dies off and the bees couldn't survive anymore without her but if the queen bee is still there, then that's usually a sign of Colony Collapse Disorder.
I also found it interesting that they actually just leave everything there. Like they don't take any honey or food or everything they just leave. I would love to see what a hive looks like when this has happened and if there's anything that you can notice that looks different or things like that.
Nosema Disease: This is crazy because firstly, it usually only effects adult bees and secondly, within two weeks the bees gut is completely infected with this Nosema disease. Also, it looks like this disease travels quickly and is most commonly spread when bees are forced to stay in the hive (aka:winter) and are not able to do many flight trips. Bees lives are reduced once they have this infection and if many of the bees are infected, there is a chance that the whole colony could die out over the period of one winter which is kind of scary! This is what we were checking for in our last U.A. class and it all makes a bit more sense now because it is almost a rare disease but if one of the bees have it, then you have to look carefully into what might happen to the rest of the colony. My question would be if you found out that some of your bees actually had this disease, could your colony survive it or is there not much hope?
University of Florida talk: Well this was pretty big because it's the number one killer of bees on the planet! Varroa mites are so big actually it would be like us carrying a basketball around, which I never knew about. It's not only found in the US but actually in most countries. The females are usually attached to honey bees on the outside.Once their ready to reproduce, they leave the honeybee so basically they just use them as there camping ground for a bit. Whats crazy is they can actually stick something special they have into the royal jelly and this helps them to breathe near the royal jelly while none of the other bees actually know that they are there.Males are always white. Once their born near the royal jelly, they will just come out and actually hope on the another bee right away which is amazing because it's just a pattern that they do and there offspring do and so on. Are Varoa mites on most bees? And does it change the way the bee acts or does their work?
