any idea's what may be happening here?

these photo's have been taken today, this colony is good and strong with bees covering all the frames, it is Q+ and it was a combination of 2 colonies that were quite small and a small nuc, the combining was done at the beginning of August.

They are now half way through Apiguard where the mite drop has been reasonable but not huge. counting beyond 10 with my wellies on is a bit difficult

there is not a great deal eggs and larvae, but I'm not too concerned about that as I've seen queens go off lay while the apiguard is on before.

in the picture there is 3 uncapped cells that have pupa, the one on the right has brown/dark eyes (it is not a mite) and the rims of the cells have been raised slightly as you can see in the second photo. the cell in the middle that is also white contains pollen.

any guesses as to what may be going on here, I can't find any reference to this kind of thing in ted hooper

Looks odd to me but I don't know what the problem is. Hope you get San answer.

I am trying to work out how the photo was lit. Are you using a ring flash?

Paul

thanks for the reply Paul, I had hoped that someone might have seen this sort of thing before

the photo's were taken with my mobile phone

Am I right in saying that these cells are at a junction between a set of worker cells and a set of drone cells(below and left)?

Looks like the 3 worker larvae were sealed in with domed caps as drones but have had the tops taken off. Now they have either died and the workers are about to remove the dead, or it might be a sign of bald brood, ie a wax moth larvae has shaved off the cappings and they may still be alive and continue their metemorphosis even though the cell is open.

Are you sure that the cell in the middle is pollen and not the remains of a another of these opened larvae partial eaten or even a chalk brood mummy partially eaten by the workers?

Also you have a sunken capping between the 2 top open cells, did you open it to see what was going on in there?

dclewis said:

Am I right in saying that these cells are at a junction between a set of worker cells and a set of drone cells(below and left)?

Click to expand...

thanks for the reply, I think that might be an angle of the picture type thing, the frame as far as I remember is all worker cells.

dclewis said:

Looks like the 3 worker larvae were sealed in with domed caps as drones but have had the tops taken off. Now they have either died and the workers are about to remove the dead, or it might be a sign of bald brood, ie a wax moth larvae has shaved off the cappings and they may still be alive and continue their metemorphosis even though the cell is open.

Click to expand...

I dont know, I havn't seen any wax moth in my hives this year, but as this was a combination of 2 weaker hives and a nuc there is the possibility, I'll have to read up on bald brood

dclewis said:

Are you sure that the cell in the middle is pollen and not the remains of a another of these opened larvae partial eaten or even a chalk brood mummy partially eaten by the workers?

Click to expand...

100% positive, I had a really good look and jabbed a twig in there after I took the photo

dclewis said:

Also you have a sunken capping between the 2 top open cells, did you open it to see what was going on in there?

Click to expand...

again, I think that's a camera angle trick, where the 2 cells either side has been raised this one looks sunken, no I didn't open it.

In the second photo you can see another cell off to the right that has been raised in the same manner but was actually empty.

I'm hoping that it's something to do with the Apiguard, these bees would have been eggs when the first try of Apiguard was put on, that's just a guess though

dclewis said:

Looks like the 3 worker larvae were sealed in with domed caps as drones but have had the tops taken off. Now they have either died and the workers are about to remove the dead, or it might be a sign of bald brood, ie a wax moth larvae has shaved off the cappings and they may still be alive and continue their metemorphosis even though the cell is open.

Click to expand...

good call

this link shows a photo that is very similar although I didn't see any sign of wax moth as shown in the top photo https://secure.fera.defra.gov.uk/beebase/index.cfm?pageid=201

to me looks like drone cells where the capping has been either aborted or started to be torn down. you could pop the contents out and check if drone or worker.

i would guess that the bees just decided that no more drones needed.

No need to guess DrS, the answer is in the link, Bald Brood, what I saw and photographed is exactly the same as the BeeBase page