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.

Mellona and Bermuda

These two hives are my standby strong ones. Mellona is entering her second winter. Bermuda is entering her third. She has barely made it through both of her winters, but perhaps this one will be the best one yet.

I've been worrying a little about Mellona. She has always looked weaker than Bermuda - less bees on the front porch and always looks a little on the low numbers side. Today there was brood everywhere - capped cells and brood in all stages of development.



On this frame you can see five emerging workers - they're the bees coming out of the cells face forward. The nurse bees are going into the cells headfirst!



In the picture below you can see larvae in all stages of development.



I was tired and needing to shower and go to work when I got to Bermuda so I only took this picture. The brood is obviously still in process - so that's good. I noticed in Bermuda there are two boxes each of which had half of its frames filled with honey and the other half empty. On my next inspection I'll combine the two boxes.

The combination will be a little problematic because one of the boxes is a medium and the other is a shallow....this is the argument for using all the same sized boxes. I had to put a box on in a hurry when I was on my way out of town and grabbed a shallow by mistake since all of its frames were there. But next time around I'll put the shallow frames in the medium box and hope for as little burr comb as possible!

I just noticed the stick in the bottom left of the frame. I believe this is a box that I started with popsicle sticks as starters and the stick must have fallen out of the slot and been incorporated by the bees into the wax comb!

How's It Going At Aristaeus2?

This hive started from the second swarm I collected. The swarm was tiny and the bees were small as well. I've left the hive pretty much alone and have occasionally inspected it - maybe three deep inspections since I got it on April 8.

Today I looked into the brood box - I've never seen the queen in this hive. She obviously is hard at work and here is her brood pattern. Looking good, she's still building up the hive numbers as we approach the fall.



Aristaeus2 had an extra empty box on top of it so that they could clean it up after harvest for me. Now they will winter in this shape:
one deep and two medium boxes. I may need to consolidate the top two boxes but for now both are heavy with honey.

The Persephone Combo Succeeds

I opened Persephone to find a huge number of hive beetles. I call this first picture "Death by Hive Tool" All of the beetles including the ones congregating in the upper left corner are dead, smashed with my hive tool.

This hive has a shim on it under the inner cover because I need to feed it, but there were so many hive beetles that I think I need to put a trap inside the shim instead. The open area makes for more space that the bees have to defend, so I need to have a purpose for the shim or take it off.



There was healthy brood and larvae in this hive and I feel good about how the newspaper combination worked on this hive. It seems a little light on stores, though, so I need to feed it over the next few weeks. This hive had a hard time succeeding and the bees in it were without a queen at the beginning so they missed the honey flow.

Devorah--the Re-Queened Hive and Her Progress

Right before Labor Day I installed a new queen in this queenless hive. There was absolutely no brood in the hive and the cells in the brood box were polished clean. The bees were angry and the hive was not doing well, as would be true of any queenless hive.

I installed the new queen and went out of town. When I returned the queen had been released and the hive seemed to be buzzing along.

Today I inspected to see if she had actually begun laying. My first sight was this wax moth worm being dragged out by a house bee. I took the shot after the house bee had returned to the hive. My heart sank at the idea that wax moths had overtaken the hive.



I also saw small hive beetles, as I did on this inspection in all of my hives. Here's one just hanging out with the bees.


But when I opened the previously empty brood box, I found to my huge relief, there were brood cells, capped and ready to emerge. I saw some larvae but didn't look at more than three frames in the brood box. I just wanted to make sure there was capped brood and I didn't want to take the risk of smushing Her Majesty. So relieved to see capped brood, I closed up the hive and left.

In a couple of weeks, I'll check again. I didn't do a powdered sugar shake on this hive because the varroa cycle was interrupted by the queenless problem. However, I may do a shake on my next inspection of this hive.

The Metro Atlanta Beekeepers' Honey Contest

Tonight was the annual Metro Atlanta Beekeepers Association honey contest and party. The food was great. I took a beehive cake like I'd made for my book club last year. The little jelly bean bees with almond wings turned out better than the previous cake I baked.

I'm so grateful that my daughter Valerie gave me this cake pan - what fun I've had with it!




We had an auction of donated items from a garden hive top and an observation hive to baskets of honey goodies, baked goods, etc. I bought a candle holder, a basket of homemade honey lotions, balms, and other body indulgences, a pair of bee earrings and a necklace, and a bee hand towel.

We did all of this while the honey contest was being judged.

Our honey contest has grown - there were about 60 entries this year. Some of us entered in more than one category, but it is still a phenomenal number. Our Welsh honey judge, Evelyn Williams, declared that next year we need to have more than one judge or more time. I think she worked like a Trojan for several hours.

I am so excited! I won six ribbons - four blue first place ribbons and two red second place ribbons.

The blue ribbons were for:

1. The wax block that I poured in the end 18 times!!!!!
2. My boxed cut comb honey
3. My jarred chunk honey
4. My entry into the black jar contest - the honey is poured into a black jar and is judged purely on the taste and consistency. I wasn't planning to enter the black jar but did at the last minute. So I was particularly pleased about winning that because it was so last minute! My bees make delicious honey and I think it helps not to use an extractor in terms of the richness and thickness of the honey.

The red ribbons were for:

1. My light amber honey
2. My dark amber honey

Now I'll re-pour the wax block for the Georgia Beekeepers' meeting in a couple of weeks and I'll re-clean all of my jars and the cases for the cut comb honey and start all over again!