What does 2 + 2 add up to in these two hives?

I have two dead hives in my backyard that needed my evaluation.  I went through the first hive - the Northlake Swarm hive - which died in the second hard freeze week we had in February.  Temperatures were in the 20s most of the week.  In addition to a box full of capped honey, here is what I found in the second box:

You can also see part of the other side of the cluster on the frame below this one.  As you can see the bees were clustered over honey and they died despite more capped honey just four inches away on the same frame.  This often happens when the temperatures are below freezing in Atlanta for days.  The bees have to make a good initial decision about where to locate the cluster.  If they miscalculate,  they die.

These dead bees had a whole box of honey above them and more honey on the frame on which they died.

In addition there were a ton of dead, molded bees on the screened bottom board:

The second lost hive was Tom's swarm #2.  There were two medium supers completely filled with honey and the hive looked like it was in relatively good shape - no wax moth damage, no small hive beetles.  In the next to the bottom box (this hive had four boxes), I found a tiny tennis ball size group of bees in a semi cluster.  The queen was in this group.  

They were not head down in the cells.  The queen was thin and looked what Keith Fielder would call "short bred."  Because these bees look as if they dwindled and the queen was so small, my guess is that they replaced their queen just before winter and she did not mate well. There were probably few drones around when she went on her mating flight. There was a little scattered capped brood.  

There was no mold in the hive because it didn't go into winter with bees creating heat/moisture in the hive.  The honey held up because we had a pretty cold winter for Atlanta - I wore my coat from November 2014 through February 2015, and in 2013 only got my coat out after January 2014 began.  

The bees simply dwindled and died out.

So it's a new year; my foot is healed; let's hope for a better bee season.

Analytical Thinking about the New Dead Hive

So the hive that appears dead today (it rained and was too cold to open it today) needs some careful thought and I have not been able to get it out of my mind today.

First it originally was my Northlake swarm hive - a swarm from a hive of bees that had been living "for years" in a column in a business condominium complex.  So potentially these were feral survival bees.  They lived through the winter of 2013 and I was thrilled to have a survivor hive.

But this year, as my son-in-law called it, was the Year of the Foot.  I dealt all through bee season with my injured leg (now all better after a YEAR) and it really hampered my beekeeping attentiveness.  I have to acknowledge that my hives were neglected more than they were cared for in bee season 2014.

So the Northlake Swarm hive went queenless some time midsummer.  Because I was not in my hives every week with a cast on my leg, I missed the queenless situation until it had probably gone on a while - not long enough to develop a laying worker problem, but still long enough.

When I recognized the queenless problem in the hive, I didn't have any swarm survival hives, so I gave them a frame of brood and eggs from the Sebastian hive (the one that we moved from the yard of the GSU professor in spring 2014).  I did that three times before they made a queen.  Two frames came from Sebastian and one from my Morningside hive in the community garden.

So the queen that developed in the Northlake hive was no longer a survivor queen.  She had been made from eggs with a less clear history.

I just grabbed a frame of brood and eggs from a hive that seemed to have a lot and didn't give the genetics much thought.

This year if either my nuc that has overwintered or my neighborhood swarm hive that has overwintered go queenless, I'm using each of them to provide brood and eggs for the other.  That way they will still get survivor genetics.  I am resolved to be a much more involved and careful beekeeper in this year of NON-INJURY - crossed fingers that that remains true.

Tomorrow I'll check on Stonehurst and see if it survived - it's not a feral hive - it came from Mountain Sweet Honey last year, but it may have made it.

My ongoing goal should be to use survivors to make queens for any queenless hives.  If Tom's hive which came from Bill Owens and also appears to be a survivor hive made it through this cold period, I will split it in late March for the same reason - it's a survivor.  The nuc currently alive in my backyard came from that hive as a split in 2014.

I Think I have a Dead Hive Post the Freezing Weather

I have had three thriving hives in my bee yard at home and every time we go up to 50 degrees, I have looked out of my window with relief to see the bees flying.  We've just had a week of temperatures in the 20s or below and today it is raining and in the 50s.  Yesterday when it was up to 45, I saw bees flying from my overwintered nuc and one other hive but not the Northlake swarm hive.

Again today bees are flying (in the rain) from the nuc and the neighborhood swarm hive but no bees from Northlake.  There is such a large pile of dead bees in front of this hive that I think they must have had a disease filled winter and couldn't make it.  I feel sad about it, but that is the way it is when you are trying to raise bees that can beat the varroa mite.

Seems like I will be starting the spring in rather sparse bee condition.

Last time I was at Stonehurst, those bees were fine so I'll have to check by there tomorrow to see if the bees made it through the intense cold (and before any of you comment about how cold it is where you are and the bees survive, this was unusual for Atlanta in late February).  We have ordered bees from Mountain Sweet Honey for Stonehurst so they will have bees this year even if the hive does not survive.

I also haven't checked with Tom about his bees which were flying after the last hard freeze.  And I haven't been to Rabun County.

For sure in a couple of weeks, I'll move the nuc hive to a full sized hive situation.  And a week or two after that I'll split the neighborhood hive.

Spring Report on Rabun County Bees

On Sunday I drove up to Rabun County just for the day to check on the bees there.  I took Hannah, my dog, with me.  Hannah had a delightful time - she is a dog to whom rules do not apply: she sleeps on my bed; sits on the furniture; and loves to run off-leash on trails with stern signs at the beginning:  ALL DOGS MUST BE ON LEASH.

When we go to the community garden in Rabun County, I let her run free out of the car.  While I am checking bees, she is racing up and down the creek banks and running through the water.  She had fun.  I did not.














I found no bees in the remaining Rabun hive.  The first Rabun hive was dead before winter and someone/something destroyed the equipment.  The remaining Rabun hive was populated by a swarm last spring and the bees were still going strong in December.  Now, however, there are no bees.  They left the hive full of honey.   On the top of the slatted rack were dead hive beetles.

On the screened bottom board were less than 20 dead bees.

I brought the honey home and crushed it to feed to the new hives.  I hope there isn't anything wrong with the honey but I assume with honey's antiseptic qualities that the risk of the honey being OK is pretty high.

The only frame I could find with any brood looked like this:

I feel a need to explain that my brood comb typically doesn't look this dark and dirty.  I usually replace it every year, but a swarm moved into this hive with old comb before I knew they were there, so the hive didn't get its usual culling out of comb previous to spring.

Even with the SHB on the slatted racks, the honey had not been slimed.  I brought home six frames of honey that tasted like kudzu.

I put the hive back together and left it as a 2 box hive.  I smeared swarm lure (olive oil, beeswax and lemongrass oil) on the landing, under the inner cover and in several other places.  Maybe the feral hive in the wall of the abandoned school nearby will send a swarm my way.

Meanwhile, I'll make several nucs in Atlanta with the idea of taking one of them up to Rabun to have bees there this year.  My sweet friend, Julia, gave me a frame with at least one queen cell on it to do just that.  I added frames from the Morningside apiary to make the nuc and if it succeeds, I'll take it to Rabun County.

Disappointing Day - Difficult Start to the Bee Year

Today it was finally an OK day weather-wise to check on the hives at my old house.  It was a deeply disappointing day.

First I checked on what we have called the swarm hive since we got a swarm in Dallas, GA for it originally.  I knew it was a dead hive so this was an autopsy while I waited for the temperature to move from 48 to 50.  I opened the hive and found that the first two medium boxes held eight frames each of capped honey that was in great shape.  The next box also had about half frames of honey.  But there were no bees anywhere.  No starved bees, no bees.

On the slatted rack I found a ton of dead small hive beetles.  I guess they planned on staying in the warmth of the cluster all winter and when there were no bees, they just died.  Amazingly, none of the honey was slimed in SHB fashion.  It was all untouched.

There were no bee bodies in the hive and on the screened bottom board were just a few.

I packed all of the hive into my car.  I'll use one of the boxes of honey to demonstrate crush and strain when I give a talk on how to do that at the Forsyth Beekeepers on March 28.  The top box of honey I held back to put on one of the two live hives.

That hive had plenty of bees but felt really light.  I put the full box as the top box in this hive configuration.  There were a number of bees in the top box that I took off so since it only had one frame of honey still left (and that was only a partial frame), I put that box (with bees in it) over the inner cover so the bees would have access to that honey but it would not be the box they would rely on.

Then I opened Five Alive - it wasn't (alive that is).  There was not a bee in the hive, just like the swarm hive.  There were boxes of honey on it as well - at least 2 1/2, but I didn't have room in my car and needed to get back to the office (I have a real job when I'm not beekeeping!).  There were some dead bees on the SBB, but just a handful.

I'll go back over there and get that equipment and the honey.  I'll probably share those frames of honey with other hives that need feeding.

This is really strange.  I found the Stonehurst hives the other day sparse on bees with tons of honey (2 supers).  Today these two hives had NO bees - no brood, no nothing, but plenty of honey.  What could have happened to them?

Then I drove over to Chastain Conservancy to check on the swarm that Julia had installed in my hive over there on Friday.  There were no bees.  The swarm had not liked their new digs and had left.  A tiny cluster about the size of the palm of my hand were left in a top box - probably they were out foraging when the swarm left.  It was funny.  There were dead bees on the landing as if they had settled in and were carrying out the dead, but not a sign of the swarm.

Meanwhile at home, the drone layer hive is flying like mad, carrying in pollen like mad, but has got a queen who isn't worth blowing up.

I do have empty basic hives everywhere some hive has died in hopes of attracting a swarm.  It is hard to hear of my friends who use oxalic acid, feed their hives, wrap them for our non-winter and have thriving bees while I am trying to go without poison, etc. and my bees are doing badly.

What a day!  Thought I'd report and go to bed....discouraged with this start of the year.

Hive Tally as of February 19

Today I went over to my old house to see what bees are flying.  Out of the four hives there, one died going into winter; Five Alive appears to be dead and smells dead (like small hive beetles were opportunists); the other two are alive and apparently well.

There were bees flying in and out of both of these hives.  The hive in the back felt really heavy.  The hive in the front was relatively light.

I then went over to the Chastain Conservancy to see how our bees were doing there.  My hive has died, but one of Julia's is still alive and well.  I had left honey on my hive, but it was still untouched (duh, the hive died).  I expect it went queenless into winter, but I'll open it up to see when I have more time.

I ordered only one package this year and that was from Fatbeeman, so that I would have bees to put in this teaching hive.  Julia has also ordered a package from Don for the dead hive she has at Chastain.  We are driving up to get the bees together, which should be fun.

I thought you'd like to meet Chuck, the goat who lives behind my beehive at Chastain.  He is quite the climber and is standing on the roof of his goat house in the photo below:

We'll install new packages here in the middle of March and have our first hive inspection for the Metro Atlanta Beekeepers club here on March 23.

So here's the final tally:
2 hives alive at Stonehurst
2 hives alive at my house
2 hives alive at my old house
1 hive alive at Morningside community garden

I've ordered bees to replace the Chastain hive so I'll only have 8 hives as spring starts.

We will split and move the two hives at my old house in March.  I have yet to check in with Sebastian to see if there are bees flying at his house and I haven't been to Rabun County to check on those bees since it started getting a little warmer.

Note:  I heard from Sebastian today and the hive is ALIVE!  Can't wait to visit and see what's what over there.  I plan to split a nuc off of one of my home hives and split a nuc off of the hive at his house. Then I'll bring the nuc from his house to the Morningside Garden to replace the dead hive there and put the nuc from my house in his dead hive location.  Whoo Hoo.

Location, Location, Location: Key for Bees in Winter

I opened my hive that has died in my backyard and was sad to find that there were many dead hive beetles along with dead bees.  The cluster was very small - about the size of a tennis ball - which makes me wonder if they went queenless into late December.

Sad to say, the cluster was on a frame where there was honey and there was honey in the frame immediately to the back of the frame with the dead bees.

Bees simply can't generate enough energy to move when the temperature is below 50 and certainly not if the temperature is in the 30s as it was for a week in late December.  These bees had resources and couldn't move to get to them.

Even sadder is another frame where the bees who are dead are just above honey on the same frame.

There were a lot of small hive beetles in with the bees but since there were still frames of honey in the hive, the SHB is not the cause of the hive death, but starvation and cold weather was.

I had seen bees flying from this hive in early December, but they were no longer present when I returned from the mountains after Christmas.  The queen's laying is tied to the winter solstice so she had not begun in any way.  I am thinking with the small population in the cluster and no evidence of any brood rearing that this hive was queenless going into winter.

I don't know if it's safe to give this honey to my two-box medium hive that appears to be quite happy but feels really light.  I do think the bees starved and did not die of disease, so I think that means I could give these frames of honey to the light hive, but I'm scared so I didn't do that today.  Thought I'd at least sleep on it.

The Demise of the Hive

Such a sad feeling to open up a robbed hive.  I avoided it most of the day, but then realized I had to do it - I had to know what the situation was.  I've had robbing before and the hives have made it through but my heart sank when I opened the robbed hive and saw……only dead bees.




I took it down to the bottom.  The bees on the SBB were sad and some were still alive but unable to move to get up and fly.







I looked for the queen in the dead but did not see her.  I did find in one box clustered between the wall and the first frame a handful of bees.  There was still some honey unrobbed but no brood - all those cells which had brood on Thursday - were empty today.

I just feel sick.  I wonder if I did something at the inspection on Thursday to set this off.  Did I open the cappings of honey as I pulled frames from the box?

Then I remembered that the reason I opened the hive on Thursday was because I had seen very little activity and had wondered if something were wrong.  I was surprised to find the hive full of bees.  It wasn't boiling over, but there were bees in every box, new eggs and brood.  I had worried about honey and all of my bees but this hive had plenty of honey (thus the robbery).

I wonder if they had possibly already had problems and the robbing just cinched their fate.

I feel heartsick.  This has been a hard year.  I have had more hives this year than every before, but I have now lost five hives without the winter being the issue.  And most of the losses have been in my own backyard - not in the outyards that I also manage.

Gosh, I'm Feeling Like a Bad Beekeeper

I went up to the mountains for the Fourth of July to see the fireworks and to check on the bees.  I love the Rabun County fireworks - we go and sit on a blanket in a field near the Rabun Gap Nacoochee School.  We wait eagerly for dark (which doesn't come until 9:30) and by then the grandkids are sleepy.  But the fireworks are grand and glorious - (and don't include Atlanta traffic jams) - so we have a great time and are back at the house by 10:05.

Since the Fourth was on a Wednesday, all of us needed to go back to Atlanta the next day.  Before I left I went to check on the bees.  Sad news:  The over-wintered hive was almost completely dead - all of the honey was covered in small hive beetles and the whole hive smelled of orange crush (a sure sign of being slimed by the small hive beetle).

I was so upset that I didn't want to look at the evidence and determine the reason the hive failed, allowing the rise of the SHB.

When I was last up there about three weeks ago, there was no nectar and although I saw brood and eggs, the hive had no evident stores (although the slime would indicate otherwise).  I imagine that I may have killed the queen in that inspection.  When I put on one of the boxes, a roar went up from the hive, but I discounted the possibility.  If the queen died in that inspection and stores were so low, the hive may have not been able to make a new queen.

The frame of bees below is all that were left.  Since I didn't know what caused the end of the hive, I didn't shake them into the other hive for fear of contaminating them, if the hive were diseased.

I regreted not having enough supplies - I couldn't move the bees into a nuc because I didn't have one.  I had brought boxes to add but not solutions to problems.



On the good side of things, the other hive, which was a swarm that took up residence there this year, was busting out all over with bees.  In spite of encroaching kudzu, hundreds of bees were coming and going.  Afraid and feeling like a bad beekeeper, I didn't inspect this hive - didn't want to kill another queen.

I looked in the top box which was completely empty on my last visit.  They had filled five frames, drawn new wax and were filling it.  Sourwood is blooming up there now and this looks like nectar that ends up as sourwood honey.  We'll see.

I won't go back until the 22nd and by then the surviving hive may be covered up with kudzu.

Pick myself up, Dust myself off, and Start all over again…..

For days I had been seeing lots of bees flying in and out of my one remaining hive at home. I assumed they were alive and well and given the Atlanta extra warm winter, I should be ready to checkerboard to help expand the brood nest as Michael Bush talks about in his book and on his website.

So last Monday, I went out, bee bag in hand, planning to expand the broodnest.

I took a box of empty frames with foundation strips, ready to do the job.

I opened it up, went through every box, and found that in fact, the hive was dead - no bees, no brood, just stored nectar and a few bodies on the screened bottom board (AGAIN).  The bees flying in and out of the hive in great numbers were not residents, but rather either robbers or scouts……I had to go back to the office and was so upset that when I returned to my business clothes and got to my office, I looked down and I had on two different shoes!

Well, who can blame me? This was quite upsetting. I now have no hives alive at home.

The only possible good news is that bees continue to go in and out of that hive in large numbers. They don't appear to be robbing so I am hoping a swarm will move in in a week! Fingers crossed.

I do have five packages ordered from Don K and 2 nucs ordered from Jerry, so I should be OK in the start all over again department.

Note:  This is my 950th post - that means I'll pass 1000 in 2012!

Conclusions about the Dead Hive in my Beeyard

Today I removed all the frames in each box of the dead hive in my yard. As I thought the hive died out from being queenless and through beekeeper error (I didn't realize they were queenless and didn't combine them with another hive, for example).

There were scattered dead bees throughout the hive. What looked like perhaps the last part of the living bees had died together (about eight of them) in box two on the tops of the frames. I looked through the bodies on the slatted rack and the screened bottom board. I saw no deformed wings, no varroa mites, no dead queen - just worker bees. All told there were about 30 or so dead bees in the hive.

In the picture below you can see numerous small hive beetles dead with the bees.

Because I had fed them bee tea, there was a lot of stored nectar. Here's one frame with every cell filled with nectar.  There was only one frame of capped honey.  Bees that are queenless can die out with honey in the hive because they simply come to the end of their life span and with no queen, there are not younger bees to replace them.

On the frame below, you can see some evidence of their attempts to make a queen. There was absolutely no capped brood or any brood of any kind.

This is clearly a hive that died out from lack of a queen. I should have paid better attention to it going into winter. It's also possible that their queen died fairly early in the winter and they didn't have resources to replace her.

I'm sad that they are gone, but satisfied that I know the cause and that gives me some peace.

Bee-wary of Late Winter

In Atlanta we had a sudden drop in temperature from the highs 60s to the 20s where the temperature has remained for several days.  When it's cold like this, we only have highs in the 30s at best.  When this goes on for several days, the bees are in real danger.

The warmish weather fools the bees into acting like it is spring and they go out, forge for pollen, raise brood, etc.  Then suddenly we have this kind of cold snap.  

The whole hive can die, if the cluster isn't located where there is stored honey.

So I am crossing my fingers and hoping for the best.

I have one dead hive in my back yard.  I looked through it the other day when I did my first powdered sugar shake.  There is honey in the hive and dead bees scattered through the frames.  I didn't take the bottom box off (too big a hurry to get back to the office), but I'll let you know what I find when I do.

My current theory is that the hive went queenless before winter and I didn't recognize that this had happened so I could combine it with another hive.  I may find something else when I look further and then we'll know more, but for now, I'd speculate that the hive died naturally because there was no queen.

In the photo above you can see the few dead bee bodies on top of the frames.  I'll look at these for signs of varroa or deformed wing when I get back into the hive.



For now, I put it back together until I have time in the next few days really to study it.

There was a rapid feeder on top of the hive still half filled with bee tea with a number of dead ants floating in the tea.  I strained it into a jar and may put that on another hive if I don't find evidence of foul brood when I study the cells in the dead hive.

The Ravages of War

Last weekend I brought two frames of honey home from my old house to feed Topsy. I also made some syrup to put in the Rapid Feeder on top of the inner cover inside an empty hive box. I put all this on the hive and robbing began. As my grandson would say, it was a battle royale. I covered the hive with a wet sheet, but the bees were attacked viciously as other hives wanted to rob this very weak hive.

Bodies were strewn all over my backyard. The hives border a concrete basketball court so evidence of death was everywhere and more easily seen than in the grass.

Just look at all these dead bees. I wanted to cry.



Many of the bodies were ripped in half. Bodies were all across the concreted area covering about a 10 X 20 foot area.


If you click on the picture below, you can see many dead bees.


It's harder to see, but I stepped back so you could see how extensive the area of death is.



I believe at this point that Topsy is no more.  I am sad to see such a persistent hive bite the dust, but that is what has happened here.  Bang the drum slowly.

No Bees at Home

I guess the end of this saga at my house is that there are no bees at home. The hive on the left is the huge one that absconded earlier in the summer. The middle hive with the robber screen on it is the one I moved to a clean box to try to thwart the fact that they appeared to be a dying hive.

The nuc box (blue) on the right is the nuc I started with the queen who had been caged for two weeks when I finally realized it and moved her to this nuc. She must have suffered from PTSD after such a long caging and didn't get going - her brood pattern was spotty at best and in the end, the nuc was robbed out and all the bees died.



The wax moths will move in if I don't move the wax into the freezer - which is a project for tomorrow. You can see a wax moth cocoon on the right on frame 3.



To add to the sadness, when Julia, Noah, and I went to Blue Heron today to check on and feed the bees, one of her two hives there had absconded. There wasn't a bee in the place.

So goes this summer. I hope next year will be better for both bees and me. At least I still have the Blue Heron hive, the hive at Valerie's and my hive in Rabun County.

I want to sell my house and move closer to my Atlanta children so that I can be a more active grandma. This will give me an opportunity to move the hives off of the deck and have it pressure washed and maybe stained to help sell the house next spring.

 I've already ordered two nucs from Jennifer Berry for next year. I'll probably get a couple from Don in Lula as well, but he doesn't take orders until the beginning of the year. I'll put those bees either at Rabun, Blue Heron or wherever I live next!