Bees as Pets vs. Survivor Bees

I've now heard two talks at bee meetings in which the speakers say something to the effect of this:  "The bees are our pets.  Would you let your dog or cat starve to death?  Of course not, so why would you let your bees starve?"  Kim Flottum, editor of Bee Culture, said this last year at the GBA annual meeting.  Then last month Jennifer Berry said pretty much the same thing at the Metro Atlanta short course.

It's an effort to encourage new beekeepers to establish the practice of feeding their bees.

I don't know how to think about this.  My inclination is to go with leaving honey on your hives so that the bees go into winter with enough to make it through until the nectar flow starts.  Of course if we keep have earlier springs and nectar flows that happen out of sync with the bees buildup, then the bees won't have enough to go through the winter, regardless of whether you leave honey on the hive - there won't be honey to leave.

That's the way it was this fall.  The nectar flow last spring (2012) was early and concentrated so that the bees only had about three weeks to collect their entire supply.

In the Complete Idiot's Guide to Beekeeping, Dean and Laurie say (p.85) about feeding sugar syrup, "these are not acceptable substitutes for honey as bee food.  Their nutritional values are not equivalent.  They also do not have the same pH as honey and so alter the microbial culture of the hive.  Many bee pathogens grow more readily at the pH of sugar syrup than at the pH of honey."

The previous winter I fed all of my hives bee tea going into winter.  I still lost about half of my hives.

In 2012 I only harvested from two hives.  I left all the honey on the other hives.  I still lost hives.  I lost the second biggest hive in my backyard to fierce robbing (see video on this blog).  And we lost a hive at Stonehurst and at Sebastian's house each to robbing.  I think the terrible robbing this year was due to the climate change-induced early spring and crazy short nectar flow, so many bees were short on stores.

I lost a couple of hives who absconded because they knew they didn't have enough honey to go into winter.  I fed honey to the hives who remained.

I fed honey to the hive at Chastain, but even though I could see bee activity and the hive felt light, they didn't take the honey.  I fed honey to Sebastian's remaining hive but they also didn't take the honey.  When I say that, I mean that the rapid feeder still was full of honey the next time I looked under the telescoping cover.  I haven't checked on Sebastian's bees to see if they are still alive.

In my own backyard, I lost a hive that I didn't feed with honey still in the hive but not by the cluster.  The cluster was so small that I think it's more accurate to say I lost that hive to queenlessness going into winter than to say it starved, although that was the immediate cause of death.

At the Morningside community garden, one of my hives is alive and active (I didn't feed it) and the other is dead .  I haven't opened it to see what the cause of death was.  The Boardman on the front of this hive was for water in the heat of summer and I just never took it off.

In my own backyard I have two vigorous hives.  At Jeff and Valerie's house where I kept the bees on the deck, I have at least two live, strong hives and possibly one other.  I lifted the top cover of Five Alive and saw a live bee walking around although no bees were flying out of it.  The fourth hive appears dead.  Those bees (all four hives) were full of honey going into winter.

At Rabun County, the last time I looked up there, the one hive was still going strong.  I fed them but they didn't take the honey.  You'll remember the other hive was knocked over and destroyed.

I would rather take these hives that made it through the winter and split them to make two strong survivor hives.  These are hives that stored enough and fought off the varroa vectored diseases.  Jennifer Berry said to me at the short course that while that was fine, I wouldn't know WHY the hives survived.  She's right about that.  But I'd still prefer to try this and go for bees that don't need me to feed them.

Stonehurst Place Saga

Today I did a deep inspection of the hives at Stonehurst Place Inn.  I knew one hive was dead and wanted to find out why they had died.  I suspected they starved/froze in the cold few days we had when it was 19 degrees here after a warm spell.

I also wanted to check the first hive to see if they appeared to have swarm plans.  I had given them a new box when I was here a couple of weeks ago and discovered that the second hive was dead.

I always get stung a couple of times working these bees.  Today was no exception - three stings - left hand little finger, upper left arm, lower right leg.  These aren't really mean bees compared to Colony Square but aren't bees I want to work on gloveless.



The top box which I had given them at the end of February had three frames of drawn comb, two frames of barely drawn comb and one frame with comb being built from the bottom.  This is because I just threw this box on top of the hive and didn't give them a full frame from the box beneath to act as a ladder.  I moved this bottom drawn comb to the edge of the box.  If they don't fill it out, I'll take it out on my next visit.

The second box was heavy with capped honey and uncapped nectar.



When I lifted off the box to look at the one underneath, I broke open honeycomb they had built between the boxes - they were distressed and immediately began re-gathering the honey because the bees will store this again.  They do not waste something they worked so hard to create.



The capped honey was what is called "wet cappings" because the bees lay the wax cap right on the honey creating a wet look.  I wonder what influences their choice to make wet or dry cappings?  Anyway, this hive is on track to make a lot of honey.  We'll probably need to harvest early and maybe more than once.



So the top box was empty but newly drawn comb.  The second box was all honey and nectar.  The third box was full of brood - and it was pretty as well.  Here you see what brood looks like on newly drawn comb.


There are both drone cells (the highly rounded tops) and worker cells on this frame.  Some of the drone cells are not fully capped and you can still see the larva through the opening in the top of the cell.



I thought it was interesting that they put drone cells occupying one whole side of this frame.



In this comb you can see worker brood capped to the left, and uncapped larvae just to the right of that.  Then in the open cells there are eggs.  You may have a hard time seeing the eggs in the cells with the light behind them, but in the cells with the darker background, you should be able to see a lot of eggs (at about 1:00 in the photo).



I was planning to remove the bottom deep but the bees had drone brood between box 1 and box 2 as well as between box 2 and box 3.  When I pulled up frames from the bottom, it's true that they weren't fully using the frames, but there was brood as well as nectar stored there.  The good news is that I didn't see a single queen cell or even an opened one, so these bees must not be planning to swarm - at least not right now.



When I opened hive #2 it was clear that they had starved.  The bees were flying around in January when I did the powdered sugar shake and the hive looked healthy.  Right after that, though, we had a string of four or five days with weather too cold for the bees to move or fly.  These bees died then.  There was a baseball sized cluster of bees - you can see the top of the cluster in this picture.



The frames were sickening.  They were clustered through three frames.  A sure sign of starvation is to see their little rear ends up in the air, heads down in the cell, getting the final sip of honey before all dying together.



We've ordered two nucs for Stonehurst - a nuc to replace this one and a new nuc to make a third hive.  It's going to be really crowded back there, working the bees, but the Inn will be glad for the opportunity to make more honey this year.

The Demise of the Rabun County Bees

Earlier this year In February,  I looked at the Rabun County hive. There were lots of dead bees on the bottom, but I didn't open the hive. There were a few bees flying in and out, but only a few.

On Monday I went to Rabun County to install a second hive.  Because I had a bad feeling about the hive in February, I took two packages to install there in case the hive had died.

I am so sad to report that the hive had starved to death with a full super of honey just above the cluster.  I have never seen dead bees so clearly defining the cluster.  It covered four frames and part of the fifth.  The cluster was round in about the diameter of a baseball and elliptical in length.  I never have had such a clear picture of what a cluster looked like in my head, so seeing it this way was helpful for learning what they look like, but what a sad way to learn.



I am so disappointed that they didn't make it.  I had high hopes for them going into winter.  I had fed them bee tea and was pretty sure there were no other illnesses in the hive.

What a loss and what a shame!

What does Starvation Look Like?

As the temperatures warm, many beekeepers are opening their hives to find that the hive is dead. The cause is frequently starvation.

Bees cannot move when the temperature is low - often they are immobile because it is too cold for their muscles to function. Honey can be plentiful in the hive and they will still die if the cluster is too small and the temperatures are too cold to move to the next spot where honey can be found in the hive.

We arrived at Blue Heron today (Julia, Noah and I) to find Peter, one of the other beekeepers there, looking at his dead hive. Here's what he found in the hive in the photo below. You can see the remaining bees all grouped together. They are dead and starved.

There is nothing left in his hive. The honey which was in the hive has either been consumed by the bees over the winter or robbed out by my hive, the only living hive at Blue Heron at the moment.



Here is a picture of starvation up close and personal. This is Julia's dead hive at Blue Heron. The bees die with their heads down in the bottom of the cells, usually with their probosis sticking out, as they lap up the very last drop of honey.



Here's an even closer look so that you can see how the bees are all head down together. There's plenty of pollen in this hive, as you can see on the right of the picture, but no honey.

Julia has ordered a new package for Blue Heron.  I have two nucs coming from Jennifer Berry and will put one of them here .  We'll have bees at Blue Heron this year, but Julia's hive and Peter/Kevin's hive are both dead as of today's inspection.


 In a way, that will make life interesting.  We can compare a second year hive to a first year hive (if mine remains alive).  We also might use my hive to make a split which could be interesting.

My wish is that we get some honey from Blue Heron this year - I'd like to taste it and we're entering our third year at this preserve (and so far, no harvest!)  But we have learned a lot.  And Julia, Noah and I have become fast friends - can't beat that as an added value to the experiment of Blue Heron!

Top Bar Topsy is Alive and Well - at least for now

It's 55 in Atlanta today (according to my car) and Valerie called with delight to report that the bees are flying out of Topsy, the top bar hive at her house. When warm temperatures arrive, the bees come out to relieve themselves and to carry out the waste from the queen. If it stays warm (which is not the case predicted), they will do some housecleaning, but temperatures are predicted to fall to the upper 30s tonight.


Yesterday I stopped by Valerie and Jeff's house to check on the bees. Topsy was quiet, still and appeared dead - felt cold, could hear nothing - but I still crossed my fingers that our so far so cold winter had not resulted in their starvation.



Today they are alive. Bee killing weather is possible for the next couple of months - our bees in Atlanta often starve with suddenly cold weather in February or March.

I'm hoping for a very sunny Groundhog Day!

Oops, upon re-thinking this, I realize that what I want is a very cloudy Groundhog Day so that he doesn't see his shadow so that spring will be on its way.

Analyzing the Dead Hive - Why did they die?

Today in the icy weather I opened up the dead hive to see what the situation appeared to be. There were a pile of dead bees on the slatted rack landing area. There were tons of dead bees on the screened bottom board. In a hive that has starved, generally the bees all die together with their heads down in the last cells where honey was found.

This hive died with two full boxes of stored syrup. There were about 30 bees head down in a frame but the rest were dead all over the hive. Most of the bodies are on the slatted rack and screened bottom board.

If you look carefully at these pictures, you'll see lots of dead hive beetles in with the bees. The SHBs can't stay alive without the heat from the bees.

You'll also see that most of the dead bees have their proboscis (their tongue) sticking out. Bees do this in starvation, but seeing them on the bottom board with their tongues out seems strange to me. Also a number of these bees have varroa mites on their bodies. I don't know if they are dead from a varroa vectored problem or from starvation or did they freeze to death?

Note: beneath the screened bottom board is the tray from the Freeman beetle trap - lots of dead beetles there too. However the hive is not destroyed by the beetle....there are just a lot of bodies around.

I'd be interested in any theories anyone would like to offer.

I sifted through the bodies and did not find a queen. That doesn't mean she wasn't there - I just didn't find her. Although this hive may have died because they were queenless. There are a lot of dead bees between the frames front edge and the front wall of the hive box and I didn't go through those.

Toll the Bells - One Hive Dead

Today the bees were flying and happy in Mellona and Aristaeus2. In each of these hives the sugar syrup I put in at the last warm moment about three weeks ago is all eaten. Bermuda, my oldest hive, was a different story. None of their sugar syrup had been touched. The top box was full of stores but the hive is dead and gone.

Scattered through the hive boxes (3 mediums) were dead bees lying on the tops of frames. There were also dead hive beetles throughout the hive and no evidence of hive beetle damage.




I found one tiny indication of starvation on two frames in the second box. A small cluster of bees were head down in a few cells back to back on two frames. These bees obviously starved while the frame next to theirs was totally full of liquid sugar syrup. This sometimes happens with a sudden cold snap when the bees make a bad decision about where to locate the cluster.



Keith Delaplane talked at our bee meeting in February about hive decline and said that across the country, beekeepers tend to lose 30% of their hives from year to year. Well, sadly, here's my 33% to add to the average. This was my first beehive and had made it through the previous winters, including its first winter when at the end of the winter most the bees in this hive had DWV or k-wing.

Because there were dead bees scattered throughout the hive, I wonder if this hive were weak and lost its queen during the winter or going into winter. Then the hive got robbed out because that's the way the bees scattered, dead throughout the hive look: like bees killed in the process of robbing. So when I put sugar syrup in the hive at the end of January on a 50ish day, they either were already a goner hive or they didn't have the resources to use the sugar syrup. The last little cluster died of starvation, with good stores beside and above them.

I am sad to lose them, but I still have two great hives. Mellona is three years old and Aristaeus2 is a two year old swarm hive from a swarm I got in 2008. And I am building a top bar hive this weekend to be optimistic about swarms coming my way in 2010.

Bee Worried

Over the weekend, it really snowed in Atlanta and was quite cold until midday on Saturday. Last night the temperatures were in the low 20's and it barely rose to freezing today. We are having one of the coldest winters that I can remember since I moved here in 1979. Although apparently my memory is skewed, because as an Atlanta Journal Constitution blogger points out, actually our winters are getting much warmer every year.

However, this one appears to me to be expanding in its breadth. Last year in February, it felt like spring. But not this year.

I came home from the Georgia Beekeepers "spring" meeting in the snow in Moultrie, GA, almost as far south as Florida, to find my beehives had snow on the landings.

I am worried about the bees. This late cold weather can result in dead hives - not from the cold but from starvation. If the cluster is not where the food is when the cold strikes, the bees will starve.

I am also worried because when we do have a bee-flying day (above 50 degrees), I work too late to see if mine are alive and flying. Cindy Bee suggested that I dust the landings with flour on a day forecast to be warm enough for flying. Then even if I don't see the bees, I'll see their little footprints to know if a hive were up and flying.

Of course, Bermuda, the hive pictured above that I am most worried about, uses a top entrance that they created from a bad shim and I won't see their little bee-prints.

The weather forecast looks as though it will be sunny, bee-flying weather on Friday and Saturday. I'll be on the lookout for flying bees.

Note: The record high for this date in Atlanta was 78 in 1995, the record low was 11 in 1958. Today the low was 21 and the high was 30 - so you can see why I am reacting!

A Dangerous Time for Bees in the Mid-South

If a hive is going to fail in winter in Atlanta (in the mid South), now is when it will happen. Between now (early January and the middle of March we have crazy weather.

The good news is that it isn't so cold on many days and the bees can leave the hive to relieve themselves.

The confusing part is that with it 70 degrees as it was today, they might think we are closer to spring than we are. With global warming, last year, the red maple, which usually blooms at the end of February, was in full bloom in the middle of January. The bees then have a pollen source and think maybe it's time to build up. I do see bees fully laden with pollen going into the hive on these warm days.

Then as frequently happens we have a hard freeze for a week or so and they are confined to the hive again. By now the bees may be quite low on stores, raising young, and they starve to death.

The worst snow in the 30 years I've lived in Atlanta occurred on March 13, 1993 - it could certainly happen again. It is not unusual for us to have quite cold weather when one would think it is spring. We had a very hard freeze for several days in April a couple of years ago.

So now is the time, at least in the mid South, to watch colonies and check for weight to know if the honey stores are strong enough to make it through these roller coaster months. And to feed the bees if the stores are low. Because we are feeding to help in the event of cold, cold weather conditions, feeding should be done in something like a baggie feeder inside an empty hive box above where the hive cluster is probably hanging out. This weekend I'll probably be supplying sugar syrup to a couple of my hives.

Pictures below are the activity at my hives this morning....lots of bees out and about.

The Death of a Hive

Today I came home in the middle of the day - it was finally 68 degrees on a day when I had a break to inspect the hives. I opened Destin to find that all of the bees had died. Apparently they starved to death. I am so very sad. I had fed this hive with a jar of sugar syrup but had not replenished it before the 20 degree weather we had two weeks ago because I knew the hive had stores of honey in frames and didn't want to open the hive in such cold weather. I am SO SORRY that I didn't. The pictures below show what happens when a hive starves.

In the cold the bees cluster in a ball around their stores of honey. These bees are on either side of two frames, completely empty of honey. Some of them are deep in the cells trying to find the very last of the honey. The sad part is that there were four full medium frames of honey below them in the medium super (these bees are in the shallow super at the top level of the hive.)

Below are all the dead bees on the screened bottom board. I looked everywhere for the dead queen and couldn't find her anywhere.

I looked at every frame in the hive and couldn't find the dead queen nor any evidence that she had been there for a while. The red maple began blooming at the end of January and bees have been beginning to build brood since that time. There was no capped brood or larvae of any kind in this hive. I suspect that the queen died at some point over the winter and the hive has dwindled until it died altogether.

Well, I'm trying hard not to feel like a bad beekeeper because I didn't know they were starving, but it's hard to know that I could have kept them alive. Of course, if the queen were dead, I couldn't have done much about that without knowing.