DWV.

Not a good picture, that comes from leaving things until the last minute but, it does illustrate the point.

I found this young bee about ten yards from its hive scampering across the lawn! Had she stayed in the hive she would not have been tolerated by her sisters, she was doomed whether she stayed or did  a runner. There are three main viruses that effect bees, they have always been endemic but, until the last five or ten years, no one ever really bothered about them. Their transmission route is now through the hemolymph (bee blood) sucking varroa mite, the mites no longer kill bees but the diseases that they carry do. This one has the title of "deformed wing virus," the other two are "K wing virus" and "acute Israeli paralysis virus." Each of them has an unimaginative but descriptive name (usually abbreviated to its initials) so is easily recognised.  There is only the one hive in the garden, the gift that I collected from a friend during the thunderstorm on Saturday; I don't blame her as I think my other two colonies suffer similar conditions and the three have come from three different sources. There will have to be some aggressive medical treatment applied next month or I will be back to having no bees again next spring.