When the Train Has Left the Station.....

You know all those movies where the one person drives speedily to the airport only to see the plane lift off as they reach the runway?

When I went to Lithuania, I committed to the trip months ahead of time.  I also evaluated what I needed to take, what should go with me, what could I leave at home.  Something major, major would have to happen for me to change my plans.

The bees are still there this morning, but they are ready to go.  I should have seen it.  I should never have put the robber screen on - I think they started planning then.



While I can't find anything about absconding in Seeley's books, Malcolm Sanford (Keeping Honey Bees) says, "Absconding rarely occurs in colonies in temperate regions where European bees are usually kept, but it may occur if colonies are under threat from disease, pests, or depletion of forage (pollen, nectar, or water)."

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Beekeeping   doesn't discuss absconding but defines it as "Absconding resembles swarming except that  no bees are left behind in the parent colony.  The entire colony leaves its hive."

I can't find any description of preparation to abscond.  Usually in my experience the bees take all the honey.  There is one honey super still on this hive unless they emptied it this morning - which is not typical of absconding unless their tummies are full with the other honey supers.  Just like in robbing, there are shards of wax below the hive.  These are shards from brood frames and are brown rather than white:

You can see them under the hive below the screened bottom board.  

And why are the shards brown?  Because before a hive absconds, they empty the hive.  This means that they leave no or very little brood behind.  I've seen them carrying out larvae over the past few days and congratulated myself on having such a hygienic hive.....but that's not what they were apparently doing....

So now I know that before absconding you'll see young larvae being carried out, typically they empty the honey cells, and no pollen bearing bees are coming into the hive.  As a matter of fact, I think the bees out flying are scouts and are dancing to advertise new space.  I saw several rather frantic dances like Seeley describes taking place on the front of the hive. 

The bees flying in this morning were light, carrying nothing, and only doing a scout job.  The working bees this morning were the ones in the hive, still removing larvae.

One theory would be that these bees are sick and that's why they are absconding, but it looks more like they were clearing out the young to leave.  

Last night before I went to sleep, I read on Beemaster that one way to stop absconding would be to do what one might also do when hiving a swarm: put a queen excluder between the hive and the bottom board so that the queen probably can't leave.

So that's what I did a few minutes ago.  I took the hive down to the bottom board where there were tons of removed larvae.  BTW, I looked very closely at the larvae both in person and with the zoom on my Picasa viewer at the computer.  I do not see any Varroa mites.  I think these are healthy bees, sacrificed to the hive's wish to abscond.  

I put on a queen excluder (I do actually own several even though I never use them in the hive.  I use them to drain cut comb honey!).

This should hopefully stop them.  I checked the bottom board carefully and did not see the queen.  Unless she's really skinny, she should not be able to go through the excluder and the hive will stay.  Beemaster says I should leave the excluder on for at least three days.

If this hive survives, then the disruption should help with a varroa problem in that the bees have interrupted the brood cycle and thus the Varroa cycle as well.

I totally tore off the robber screen in case that was what was bothering them.

So maybe the train has left the station, but maybe I put a big enough boulder on the track to keep the departure at bay.  We'll see.

P.S.  I was at home on a phone appointment at 11:30 AM when the bees started the swirl of a hive that is leaving.  They swirled and swirled, but didn't leave since the queen couldn't come through the queen excluder.  They are still anxiously flying around the hive but haven't left.  I hope I did the right thing.  

There is no nectar flowing in Atlanta and even though the statistics say it has rained on 38% of the past 224 days this year - greater than 1/3 of the days, it seems to me as if it rains almost every day.  If they leave, there are no better areas for nectar collection around, so best if they don't.  If they are leaving because of disease, then who knows if it would be better for them not to be here.  

Crisis of Confidence with Apologies to Mo Willems

My bees and I are not having a great year.

Today I had electricians at my house so I was home more than usual during the work day.  I came home at 2 to see what progress was being made (turns out my whole house needed to be appropriately grounding so they put copper posts into the ground and ran wire to water pipes and put a surge protector on the whole house).

I glanced out into the bee yard and this is what I saw:

What's going on?  It couldn't be a beard - the other hives weren't bearding and rain was threatening.  Maybe they were absconding?   This is my best hive - the swarm hive from Patty.  It has done great this year and now it looks like they were leaving.

At 2:45 when I had to be back at my office at 3, I donned my bee veil and jacket, lit my smoker and took a quick look in to see if there were any bees or honey in the hive.

You can see the wet concrete from the rain.  And you can see that there are no bees to speak of in the hive.  I panicked.  Why are they going?  

I love the Mo Willems books and one of them is called I am Going.    I felt so like Gerald (the elephant in the story) today.

Piggie is leaving.

Gerald does not understand why Piggie is leaving and he says,  

"WAIT!  

Go later!  

Go tomorrow! 

Go next week!  

Go next month! 

GO NEXT YEAR!!!"

But Piggie replies, "I am going now."

"NOW!?!" says Gerald, "Why, Piggie?"

"Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?....."

That's exactly how I felt....thank you, Mo.  So I opened up the hive and looked deeper into it.  It was full of honey I haven't harvested yet because the year has been so bad and I don't want them to be without stores.  Usually when bees abscond, they take whatever stores are in the hive with them, so this doesn't make sense - lots of honey, no bees.

When I put it back together, the bees were still outside.  I wanted to cry.  Instead as the thunder and rain began, I covered the hive, bees and all with the wet sheet I used on another hive being robbed yesterday and went back to the office.

When I returned at the end of the day, amidst more thunder, this is what I found under the sheet:

When I put the Billy Davis robber screen on this particular hive, the bees pooled on the ground outside the hive.  The next day they were all back in the hive, but I think they don't like the robber screen one little bit.  So one thing I did today was to pull the robber screen off (see photo two above).  

At 8:30 when the hive looked like it does in the last photo, I started thinking the queen was outside the hive in this huge cluster.  So I treated it like a swarm and put them into a box and shook them back into the hive.  They'll probably leave tomorrow.  I feel totally disheartened and want to scream.  

At 9 PM, this is what they look like:

And as per Mo Willems, now I want to say:

"You are going?!  

You are going away?!"

Bees:  Yes.

"You cannot go!  

You must not go!  

I WILL NOT LET YOU GO!!!"

But what I know is that I am not in charge.  

I will feel defeated if they fly off tomorrow.  As I usually do, I will probably lick my wounds and keep on keeping on, but it won't feel good.  

It just won't.

Beekeeper Error(s)

My commitment to this blog since the beginning has been to write about all of it - my successes, but also all of my failures....Today brought my failures front and center.  As always I have learned a lot, but I should have known better.  I know I should have.

When things go wrong in a beehive managed by a beekeeper, it is almost always due to beekeeper error.  I've made two major ones.

When I installed the Mississippi Queen in the hive at Ron's, I should have put her and the bees in a completely new and much smaller living situation.  I don't know why the bees were not thriving there, but they were originally the queenless half of Lenox Pointe, the thriving hive at my old house.

They never made a queen that was any good and the final queen they had before Mississippi arrived was weak and pitiful.  The comb was old and from last year and the bees were not doing well.  I should have put new frames or at least undrawn ones in a nuc hive, moved some of the honey and all of the bees and installed her there.

Instead I put her in the old hive and she and the bees decided to leave.  So today I found an empty hive.

I came home and was looking out my window and the Sister's Keeper nuc looked forlorn and empty - bees were madly flying out of all of my other hives, but this one had no action going on.  The last time I opened it, I took a frame of brood and eggs to give to the Unintentional Nuc to make sure they grew into a good hive.

Because we are at the end of the nectar flow, I decided to replace the frame I stole with a frame of drawn comb.  I have a few of pretty, unsoiled drawn comb mostly from hives that have died.  When I put that frame into the nuc, I broke some cappings on the adjacent frame of honey.  As I turned away from the hive to go back to my office, I noticed honey flowing out of the bottom of the nuc on the ground.

I had the conscious thought that the honey flow on the ground might draw robbers, but I didn't do anything about it...making the excuse that I needed to hurry back to the office.

Tonight when I opened the nuc and looked into it, there were about five bees.  I didn't explore it because it was getting dark and I didn't have veil or smoker, but the edges of the cells that I could see were ragged as cells look when robbing has occurred.

I was so upset with myself.

I don't know what I should have done - I know be more careful in putting in the new frame.  But should I have watered the ground under the hive to get rid of the honey?  Or scraped it up with a spatula and THEN watered the ground?  I know I should have done something.

I've been telling Jeff for several weeks that we need to get robber screens on all the hives and then not pushing that we get it done.  He's busy, I'm busy.  Now I'm worried about all the hives and that we'll lose more hives because we are not doing what we should be doing - putting robber screens on all the hives ASAP as Billy Davis has suggested.

I have a little #8 hardware cloth here and I know what I'm going to be doing either early tomorrow or after work tomorrow night.

Sorry for the Radio Silence

In my real life, I have two jobs in the summer - my usual job and in addition I teach in the Emory Med School, teaching communication skills to the doctoral students in the Department of Rehabilitative Medicine.  I've been drowning in grading final exams and videos, and thus off the air for the last couple of weeks.

I'm going to post some activities from the last month to catch me (and you) up, and now that the semester is over, I'll get back to blogging about my bees.

A couple of weeks ago I went to check on the Morningside hives and found them hidden by tall grass.  The community garden is on land owned by Georgia Power and they usually do the maintenance, but someone apparently dropped the ball and the grass hadn't been cut in forever.

I had recently been up to Rabun County where I had to cut the kudzu off of the hive so I had in my car some hedge clippers.  So I grabbed them and instead of doing bees, I did landscaping.

Now I and the bees can see their front doors.  I have Boardman feeders filled with water on the hives to keep the bees from going to the neighbor's swimming pool.  Who knows?  They probably like the chlorine better, but at least I am demonstrating an effort to keep them away!  The hedge clippers are on top of the closest hive.

Then I went over to Sebastian and Christine's.  I didn't post about it, but one of their two hives was robbed out.  It was sad and I assumed the hive that was beside it, which was also the stronger of the two hives, had done the robbing.

I opened this hive to see the spoils.  Instead I found bees that were doing fine - lots of brood and bees, but very little honey.  I went all the way down to the bottom box to see what I could see and found little nectar.  

That was two weeks ago and the asters and goldenrod have begun to bloom so maybe they will bring in some nectar.  I also have some honey that I can feed them.

You can see in the photo above that there is lots of brood but no honey in the corners.

In the bottom box which is a deep (this hive started from a nuc this year), I found Her Majesty, walking regally over the frame:

I don't usually wear gloves but a bee stung me on my right hand and I threw on a glove so I could finish up.  The queen is marked with a yellow dot and is in the upper left corner of the frame.  So this hive MAY make it through the winter if they can gather some supplies in the fall flow (which in Atlanta is generally minimal).

A Sad Day in the Life of a Beekeeper

Right after lunch today, I inspected the hives at the Morningside Community Garden.  The yellow hive has been washboarding every time I've stopped to check onmy tomatoes and the blue hive looks like in the picture below.  So I've been worried about the state of the blue hive - is it going OK?  Is it dwindling?

Today I checked it out.



The top box on the blue hive has two frames of comb that I moved into it for a ladder, but nothing else.  The box below it, though, is filled with capped and uncapped honey.  The last time I looked, the only honey was capped.  The bees are bringing in something - I don't know what it is, but all of my midtown hives are bringing in nectar - and there are frames being filled.  The frame below is from the blue hive; the next photo is a frame from the yellow hive.





At this time of year, unless I have reason to be concerned, I am only looking in the hive to see:

1. What is the state of their stores?  Are they eating honey or putting it in the comb?
2. Is there a queenless roar, or any other reason to suspect queen problems?

Otherwise I just shut them back up.  The only maneuver I did was to add bottle caps to the tops of the inner covers to increase ventilation.  Wonder if that will stop the washboarding?

Then I returned home to check on SOS1 - this hive has been hard to get going.  We made a split from Colony Square much earlier in the year and because the bees were so mean, we named it SOS (Spawn of Satan 1).  These bees seemed unable to make a good queen.   Their first queen was poorly mated; their second queen while mated OK was a poor layer and slow to build up.  For all I know they even made a third queen.

Last Thursday I went through the hive.  I didn't see the queen (which I should have paid better attention to) and I noticed that the numbers were still way down.  I added two frames of brood and eggs from my strongest hive at my house to help them increase their numbers.  I thought if they hadn't done any better, this week I would combine them with SOS 2 right next to them.

So I opened the hive - no bees.  There were about 30 bees on the inside of the top cover.  I think they were newly emerged bees from the frames I gave the hive last week.  There were no more bees, no honey, no nothing in the hive.  There were remnants of eggs and brood on the two frames I added last week.  The bees were gone and the wax moth larvae were already in the bottom box.

I shook the 30 bees onto the inner cover of SOS2.

I've now lost four hives - and all have absconded.  The only good news is that all of them were free bees - well almost all of them.  The first hive to go was my top bar hive which was a swarm collected in Decatur. 

The second to go was my hive in Rabun County.  That hive was a purchased package from Don in Lula in 2011, but I had assumed they wouldn't make it through the winter and had purchased two packages to replace the two Rabun hives.  Then I found to my joy that one dead hive had a swarm move in (and it was thriving last time I was up there) and the other hive was doing well up until the beginning of June.  I didn't go through it to find out why they had dwindled.  There were still bees in that hive, but I don't think they had a queen and the SHB had taken over.

Last week just before adding a new box and only a week after seeing the queen, my Little Kitten swarm absconded.  They left nothing behind.

And then today I lost SOS 1.  I feel deeply disheartened.  The only saving grace is that most of them were free bees.

Top Bar Hive Troubles

I've pretty much been gone for the last two weeks.  First I went to Key West with my youngest daughter and her family for the second week of June.  I was home for two days and then left last Wednesday to go to Norfolk, Virginia for a psychology conference that lasted until Sunday.  So my bees have not had attention for two weeks.

Before I left I checked all of the hives, somewhat giving them each a quick once-over, but not a deep inspection.  I didn't look at the top bar beyond watching to see if bees were flying in and out….which they were.

Today all the hives had bees flying, but not the Top Bar.  I flipped off the top and found absolutely no bees…..no bodies, no larvae, no bees at all.  Every cell was empty and the wax moths were already going to work.  I pulled out all the bars and set them in the sunlight so the wax moths would not thrive.



This hive was tiny.  It started from a small swarm I captured in Decatur and then recaptured in my front yard.  I installed it into the top bar on March 25.  By March 25, the nectar flow here was almost over and they never built up well.  These combs are all they had built.



In the photo above I can see a few left capped cells so I'll look at them tomorrow.  What I imagine happened was that the hive failed to put up enough supplies and absconded out of desperation as bees sometimes do here in Atlanta in August….but this year August has come sooner.

I am currently teaching communication skills to the doctoral PT students at the Emory Med School.  Every year I tell them that it's important to be aware of whatever biases or judgmental thoughts they may bring to their relationship with patients because it will affect how they care for the patient.  I tell them that if they have a negative sense of who the patient is, maybe they'll realize it because they'll find that they are giving less good care to that patient or attending to that patient less than patients whom they like/respect more.

I should listen to my own lesson.

I have had a bad feeling about the top bar hive.  Once again the bees built crooked comb and I felt a little angry and betrayed that here, my second attempt to have a successful top bar hive, I was failing again.   I had said that if I had only had the hive in my own yard last year instead of at Jeff's, perhaps the hive would have done better.

Well, this hive was in my own backyard, but I treated it neglectfully.  I hadn't really opened it in about a month and didn't enjoy working on it, so it often took a back seat to the other hives.



How would I have managed it better had I inspected to see about the state of the hive?  Maybe if they were without stores, I would have fed them.  Beyond that with only one top bar hive, I really didn't have many other choices.  I couldn't move a frame of brood and eggs into the hive to increase the worker force without another top bar from which to borrow; I couldn't share honey from another hive since the rest are all Langstroths.

I do hope they didn't leave and die somewhere (which is highly likely), and all I can do is vow to try to be a better beekeeper for the rest of my tiny charges.

Blue Heron Check up on September 18, 2010

A Metro inspection is scheduled for Blue Heron on September 25, the last one of the year. We went over this weekend because we wondered how the hives were doing and if they needed feeding. We took sugar syrup in preparation.

When we got there we discovered various problems. Julia's first hive did have some honey and we saw the queen, but the hive was light and needed feeding. Her second hive, BP of the oil trap spill, had absconded - nary a bee in the place. My hive looked like it had been robbed, and it had some other problems which you can see in the slideshow below. We addressed the problems, were sad about the loss, and fed the bees with hope for the future of the two hives that are left.

Both of the hives that are left were low enough on stores that we will need to feed heavily throughout the rest of September and October.

Click on the slideshow to see it full size - also there are captions for each picture.

Absconding vs. Colony Collapse Disorder

I find myself thinking about Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day. Alexander is having such a bad time of it that he thinks throughout the book that he would like to move to Australia.

Although I imagine that Australian beekeepers have it pretty good - at least down there it's winter and if you are a beekeeper you are hoping your bees make it through the winter. Me, I'm struggling with my bees not making it through the summer.

So I came back from helping my brother in Natchez to find that Mellona was completely empty. The bees had absconded.

Beekeeping is an interesting challenge for me on so many levels. I have struggled all my life as an oldest child in my family, because I always feel like I have to get it right, make an A, follow the rules. Boy, beekeeping is really throwing a wrench into the works. I am forced as a beekeeper to face this "follow the rules and get it right" issue all the time.

So I switched hive positions, moving Mellona which was housed in three boxes - two 10 frame and one 8 frame - into the position of the Easter hive which had five ten frame boxes stacked. Mellona was then bursting out with bees at every possible opening, as the bees from the Easter hive returned to their old hive position.

But they hadn't used the frames in the top box so I didn't add a box. After all, the rule is to add a box when the box below is built out 80 %.

Also, I realized that they weren't solid with honey but didn't feed them because I thought they could manage with what is blooming now (although we are in a dearth). And I didn't want to feed sugar water before fall, if then, because it isn't natural.  And the rule is to feed the bees going into the fall, if you are going to feed them.  Not in the middle of the summer.

Well, pride goeth before a fall and all of that. Mellona absconded, leaving NOTHING behind. No bees, no brood, no honey, absolutely nothing.  A great lot of good it did for me to follow the rules so rigidly.

I sat down on my deck, smoker beside me, and cried. Why didn't I give them a box so they could spread out more? Why didn't I recognize that they needed food? Of course they've been gone for days and I have no clue where they went. There's no nectar anywhere in my neighborhood right now.

The pictures below show what they left - NOTHING.


Swarming:  A method of hive reproduction in which the queen and half of the bees in the hive leave to start a new hive, leaving behind the other half of the bees, queen cells, brood, honey, pollen

Absconding:  A desperate hive leaves with all the bees, the queen and everything else except the honeycomb. This happens when circumstances are not survivable in the hive as it is constituted.  The hive has no stores and no room.

Colony Collapse Disorder:  Adult bees are gone, but honey, pollen and some brood remain behind. The difference in absconding and CCD is that the honey, pollen and brood are left behind  Sometimes the queen and a handful of bees are left in the hive.  Opportunists (SHB and wax moths) seem slower to take over when CCD is the cause of the dead hive.
Robbing:  You can see dead bees and parts of bees on the tops of the frames and strewn all over the screened bottom board.  The edges of what had been capped honey are ripped, ragged and torn.  The hive may survive but the bees are disheartened and have no stores.

I remember last fall hearing a new beekeeper saying that she lost her first hive to colony collapse disorder. She didn't, I'm sure. I imagine she managed her hives as badly as I did this one and they absconded.

When bees leave at this time of year, that's what is going on. They have no stores and no hope because there's a dearth.  These bees were also bearding off of the hive in every single space - they didn't have enough room.  Then the bees leave because they have no hope of surviving in the hive as it is. They will probably die wherever they went, but they don't know anything else to do.

I am absolutely distressed.

See - completely empty comb. It hasn't been robbed out. You can tell because the edges of the comb are smooth - no torn and ripped wax. There just were no stores for these bees.  And not enough room.  Because the beekeeper was too rigid about following the rules.



The screened bottom board wasn't strewn with dead bodies (as it would be if the hive had been robbed out)  - just a little detrius from the hive.



I put the frames out on the deck to kill any wax moths who might feel inclined to take up residence.

 My dog Hannah is looking through the deck railing for the absconded hive.

And I am despondent.....it's a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

Tragic Bee Loss at Blue Heron

Atlanta has had torrential rains in the last few days. The Atlanta paper said that two storm systems came together to create this perfect storm that has dropped 12 inches of rain onto some parts of Atlanta in the last 24 hours. The Blue Heron Nature Preserve is located beside Nancy Creek.

The USGS monitor reading as per their webpage at the Blue Heron gauge for Nancy Creek is currently two feet above "Major Flood Stage" of 13 feet. This morning creeks and rivers all over the city jumped their banks. Roads were closed, including the downtown connector because the water made them impassable.



My friend Julia took the two pictures below at Blue Heron around 5:30 today. The sign in the center of the first picture marks the entry to the community gardens and describes who has what plot in the flooded garden to the left of the picture.


Julia took this picture below of the area where our hives were located. To the left of the green tree, you can see something white. We thought at first that this was a hive (because it's where a hive was located) but now we think it's the sign about the bee area that has floated there.



This picture below shows how the area looked from my car at 6:45. You can see that the flood covers the drive into the Preserve. Our hives were located behind the tree with the reddish top. All seven of the hives were swept away by the flood. Julia and I had two of the hives and the rest belonged to nice guys who were just getting started with bees.

I imagine the waters rushed into the front entrance of the hives and drowned the bees before they could abscond, but Julia and I plan to watch the trees in the area for signs of absconded bees hanging in a cluster. We hope that some got out but are not expecting that they did because neither of our hives had a top entrance. If seven hives each had at this time of year around 40,000 bees each, that's 280,000 bees that died last night or this morning.



I put little boxes into this photo where the seven hives were at the Blue Heron Preserve. It was a great place for the bees and we had a good time sharing our hives with beekeepers who came on inspections with us.



More thunderstorms and rain are expected to start between 11 PM and midnight tonight and last through the night. What will tomorrow bring?

Hot town, summer in the city....

It's hot and the bees are bearding. My Aristaeus2 hive I think is half its size. About a week ago outside at 8 PM there were thousands of bees swirling around. I thought robbing was going on and responded accordingly. Now I think that half of Aristaeus2 swarmed, or at this time of year, I guess they absconded.

To help bees who were left behind, I put a baggie feeder of sugar syrup in and closed the top of the hive. They have honey and were even making new honey but I don't know why the hive absconded, so I thought it would be best to take care of those who are left. There is a laying queen. I saw eggs after the swarming/absconding event. But without the ventilation of the propped top, even this small hive is bearding.



Bermuda, my four year old hive, is really bearding. All the girls are out. I just checked and they are still out in the summer night at 9:30 PM. The beard, if anything, is even larger than it was before at 7 when I took this picture.



Mellona has never bearded. It is a hive full of bees, but this is about as big as her beard gets. Given that it is August in Hotlanta, that is quite an accomplishment.

All of my hives have screened bottom boards, slatted racks and I keep the top propped in the summer - but still it's too hot for all the bees to spend the night indoors. So they lounge and dance (washboard) on the front porch late into the night.



"But at night it's a different world
Go out and find a girl
Come on, come on lets dance all night
Despite the heat
it will be alright
And babe don't you know it's a pity
The days can't be like the night
In the summer in the city
In the summer in the city

Hot town summer in the city"....Joe Cocker

The Rescued Nuc Hive has Died

Today at the end of the work day, I decided to check to see if the nuc hive needed more sugar syrup. I had put baggie feeders on top of the nuc box under the inner cover and top of the nuc. There appeared to be no bees when I opened the top. When I removed the baggies I could see ripped up comb and dead bees. You can see the ragged edges of comb and a few of the dead bees in the picture below.



Sadly I lifted off the box and here's what the bottom board looked like.



I sifted through the bodies but didn't see the dead queen although I am sure she was in the pile somewhere. The beige stuff is composed of the wax cappings, ripped off of the comb as the robbing commenced.

I wish I had been a better beekeeper. All of this destruction is because I replaced the queen in Devorah when the original queen was still alive and kicking, although not laying. I also think this is because we have had such a drought in Georgia that supplies for the bees are so low - just as the US economy is in a recession, the bees are in a depression!