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This section was mainly about Dave, the owner of the Hackenberg Apiaries. Dave lost about 20 million honey bees, they have just disappeared. When he checked the hives he saw healthy hives. But all the bees were missing. Sometimes which was even weirder there was a queen left behind. The queen cannot survive without the colony and the other way around. Dave has absolutely no idea what could have happened to his bees and starts to call everyone who he thought of who would be able to explain him why they disappear. The scientist brought some ideas and they made him think about many ways this could have happened. At the end they found out that it must have been one of the three known bee pests - two blood-sucking mites and the gut parasite that gives bee diarrhea. So the scientist first considered the Varroa mites. These are tiny insects (about the size of this letter o) that survive by attaching themselves to the outside of the bee an feeding on its blood. They made an experiment to determine the number of Varroa mites in affected colonies and they after have compared the number with the healthy colony. The number was almost the same, so these mites were not the cause of Dave's disaster. (The procedure was as follows: they put some bees into a bottle with a liquid and shook it vigorously for 30 minutes in a machine to loosen the Varroa mites. After they have counted the mites.) The second most common pest is tracheal mite who are much smaller and live in breathing tubes which is a safe place to be. Under the microscope they observed disected bee and did not find any sign of tracheal mite. The last pests they were looking for is called Nosema. Nosema infects the guts of bees and causes a form of diarrhea. Bees are normally very clean animals and they never litter inside the hive. Even in winter they fly out to poop. If the infection appears they are not able to control their bowls and poop inside the hive. But again there were no signs of Nosema.
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