Chilled Brood
Chilled brood is not actually a disease but can be a result of mistreatment of the bees by the beekeeper. It also can be caused by a pesticide hit that primarily kills off the adult population, or by a sudden drop in temperature during rapid spring buildup. The brood must be kept warm at all times; nurse bees will cluster over the brood to keep it at the right temperature. When a beekeeper opens the hive (to inspect, remove honey, check the queen, or just to look) and prevents the nurse bees from clustering on the frame for too long, the brood can become chilled, deforming or even killing some of the bees.
To minimize the risk of chilled brood, open the hive on warm days and at the hottest part of the day (this is also the time when the most field bees will be out foraging and the number of bees in the hive will be at its lowest). Learn to inspect your hive as quickly as possible and put frames with brood back where the bees can cluster on it immediately.
Read more about this topic: Diseases Of The Honey Bee
Famous quotes containing the words chilled and/or brood:
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Vague memories, nothing but memories.
A young man when the old men are done talking
Will say to an old man, “Tell me of that lady
The poet stubborn with his passion sang us
When age might well have chilled his blood.””
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“The last and greatest Herald of Heaven’s King,
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Among that savage brood the woods forth bring,
Which he than man more harmless found and mild.”
—William Drummond, of Hawthornden (1585–1649)