The Small Absconded Hive is Still OK

I've left the robber screen on the small nuc to help this tiny cluster of bees and the queen. It isn't completely closed up - on the right side you can see the opening. However, a robber aims for the front door and the bees who live in the nuc are drawn to the queen, so they will go to the side opening without any problem.



It's extra cold in Atlanta for this time of year. Tonight the lows will be in the 30s for the fourth night in a row. I didn't want to disturb the colony but wanted to look for signs of life so I lifted up the inner cover and found these happy girls looking up at me.



There are two Boardman feeders inside the empty second box of this nuc with pint jars on them to accommodate the shorter size of the medium nuc. The bees do not seem to be taking the syrup, however. This weekend I may pour the syrup into two sandwich bags instead. I didn't want to put a gallon Ziploc in the nuc because bees tend to drown if baggie feeders fold over on themselves. There isn't enough room in the 5 frame to allow the Ziploc to lie flat, but two sandwich bags would.

A poster on Beemaster says that he pokes holes in the Ziploc with a pin and bees can then get the syrup without drowning, but I tried that and the bees completely ignored the baggie. Slits seem to work better for me.

If it warms up this weekend, I'll open this box up again and see if the larvae are developing in the two frames of brood that I found the last time I looked.

Why Would a Hive Abscond?

This little survivor hive left its original home. Bees now are preparing for winter. Why would a hive leave everything behind and try to find a new home when there are no food sources in Atlanta right now and when their numbers are small?

Cindy Bee says that if the SHB (small hive beetle) has gotten into the hive and fermented the honey, then the bees have no supplies. Desperate, they don't know what else to do beyond abandon their home.

Jerry Wallace, a wonderful Atlanta beekeeper who is always willing to muse over things bee with me, says, "Healthy, well-fed robust hives minimize most beekeeping problems."

He also says:
1. The bees only need to have only as much room in the hive box as they can defend. This means having only the number of frames that the bees can cover. In Atlanta he leaves each hive with the brood box and one super filled with honey as winter approaches.
2. Hives are weakened when eager beekeepers rob the hive of all the honey supers and leave them with no stores for winter, planning to feed sugar syrup to make up for greed since "removing all the honey for harvest adds more stress"
3. A stressed hive offers more opportunity for the SHB to gain the upper hand

He also pointed out that a hive slimed by SHB is usually not worth saving but should be combined with another hive.

If I were to combine this rescued hive with another, I'd have to kill the queen. At the moment this queen has been quite brave, making two forays in an effort to find her bees a home. I am going to try to get this nuc up to par and overwinter the hive in the nuc.

Michael Bush does this on a regular basis and talks about it on his site.

Rescued Bees are Hungry

I left a full quart jar of syrup on the nuc hive this morning after adding the second box. When I came home from work the jar was almost half empty and now at bedtime, it is half empty. I have another ready to go for tomorrow morning.

I'm going to the Georgia Beekeeping Association fall meeting in Rabun County this weekend and want these bees to remain fed. I think I'll leave with the Boardman with a full jar and remove a couple of frames in the top box and put two Boardman bottles of syrup inside the upper box of the hive as well so that they don't run out of food while I am gone.

On second thought, I have another deep nuc box - I can put it empty over the two hive boxes as a shim to surround the feeders and then put two Boardman feeders on top of the frames of the second box. That way the bees can continue to use the 10 medium frames available to them to build up and get ready for winter - and I won't need to worry about their having enough food while I'm gone.

The Bees Found Me!

Today as I left for work, I noticed a swirling swarm of bees in my neighbor's yard across the street. I was running late and couldn't stop but I could see a plate sized pile of bees on the ground with others circling overhead and rejoining the group.

When I got a break in the day, I called my neighbor, Tom, and told him about the bees. He was shocked. He said he had been standing in that exact place earlier in the morning and there were no bees. I asked him to leave them alone and if they were still there when I got home, I'd put a hive box with them and try to retrieve them.

I called my local beekeeping guru, Cindy Bee. She said this was probably a hive that had absconded because of some problem like small hive beetles ruining their stores. Hungry and desperate, the bees leave the hive because of lack of supplies and lack of choice. She suggested that I set up a hive box with drawn comb and put it next to the pile of bees with a ramp of cardboard or cloth and that the bees would probably march right into the box.

At the end of the day, I drove home and looked over at my neighbor's house. The bees were gone. Oh, well, I thought, it wasn't meant to "bee." I checked my hives for signs of absconded bees but all of my hives were full and active.

When I get home at the end of the work day, the first thing I do is to let out the dogs. I opened the kitchen door and went out with Henry and Hannah. I was running with Hannah when I noticed the dish sized pile of bees in the center of my backyard.

The bees found me!

I did what Cindy suggested: I put out a medium nuc box, filled with drawn comb. I made a cardboard ramp and smeared a little swarm lure on it for encouragement. Right away the bees started climbing the ramp into the box! I had to go to a working dinner but by the time I left, they were steadily entering their new home. I have another box for this nuc - it's a medium nuc from Brushy Mountain - that I will add tomorrow.





Cindy suggested that I feed them heavily because they are now in a hive with absolutely no stores. I mixed up 2:1 syrup and put it in a Boardman feeder on the front of the hive. I didn't think about stings and did all of this with bare hands and no veil. I only got stung once under the fingernail of my right index finger - and that was because I smushed a bee while moving them around to put on the Boardman.

I hope they live and thrive - I'll sure try to help.

What Happened to the Absconded Hive

The picture below is a picture of the bees in this box on Saturday. There were plenty of bees in the box and I replaced the baggie feeder.



Last night (as described in the last post) I found the absconded bees attached in a cluster to the hurricane fence between my house and my neighbors. This morning I was determined to move these bees into a box. I wanted to do this to be a good neighbor and to try to save these bees.

I put on my beesuit and went out with an empty wax milk carton to try to gather the bees from the fence and pour them into the hive. At this point, I didn't have access to my neighbor's yard, so it was quite difficult to gather the bees. After a while I gave up and smeared swarm lure on the porch of the hive box about two feet from the swarm.

The hive box was a new box, new SBB, new slatted rack. The frames were the drawn frames from this original hive's box, as well as the inner cover and telescoping cover from the hive box. I took two frames of honey from another hive and there were two frames of honey left from the original hive. So the box included four frames of honey as well as a ziploc bag of 2:1 honey.

I gave up and went inside to finish getting ready for work. When I went to my car, I could see the swarm swirling in the air. I jumped out of the car and turned on the camera. In my excitement, I forgot that you can't turn the camera on its side to make movies, so the movie I attempted is on its side, but I thought you might like to see it anyway.

Hopefully the bees will stay in this box. I'll move it nearer to the other yard hives and combine it with Hyron which is still weakly on the deck.