Hello, everyone! I am a newbee that started with two hives. One hive has been, overall, very consistant. The other has thrown me for a loop repeatedly! This late in the season, I have started to watch it more closely as it looks like it may be considering a late season franchise (swarm). Overall, it is now the strongest of my hives and is, again, causing me a very interesting problem......
I got swarms in June and managed to catch one, now located about 70 feet away from my other hives. At first it was very strong, but never really thrived. About three weeks ago, I realized the numbers were dwindling so got into the hive and checked things out. Other than the reduced numbers, everything looked okay (I had larvae). Yesterday, I noticed that yellow jackets were coming and going without much challenge from the guards, so got into the hive again. What I found was really gross. Partially hatched bees, dead bees, ugly comb. Bee parts, some in, some out of cells. Capped honey that had been chewed open. After my initial panic, I took pictures and showed them to some other beeks. The consensus is that I either have a failing queen or a laying worker. They were able to show me, in the pictures, some cells with multiple eggs (which I missed in my inexperience/panic mode). I thought, "Great, it's not disease, I can fix this!" And woke up this morning prepared to chase down solutions. However.......
I walked out my front door to hear/see bees flying absolutely everywhere! This is 7:00 a.m. and it is cool and foggy. My bees aren't usually very active until later, and never like this. I checked my hives and found that my strong hive looks like it is still celebrating last nights' sorority party, and the weak hive is at war.
Is it possible that my strong hive did swarm while I was away from home yesterday and is trying to take over the weak hive? In which case where are they stashing the queen? If I allow them to continue and they succeed, is that a good thing? Don't I still need to be concerned about the amount of drone comb the weak colony has built?
Or, because the weak hive is vulnerable, are they simply robbing it? In which case, why do I have bees everywhere I look. I've had a robbing situation before and the bees went back and forth between the two hives, they didn't waste energy exploring the rest of the yard.
I could try to shut down the robbing by closing up the hive and blocking it off from the robbers. But since the hive is in the condition it is in, I am not even sure if I should try.
I'm not quite sure what other possibilities may exist, so am throwing this out to all of you. As a newbee, I am now just 2nd-guessing myself and any input you could provide would be great! I love my bees and I love my hives, but I am now much more appreciative of my horse who has only one brain as opposed to 30k or more.
Alicia :-\
There is a lot to your post, so I am going to focus on one part for the moment. When you say there are bees "absolutely everywhere," what does that mean? Can you give a better description or post a pic?
On a cool, foggy morning, my first guess would be that something stirred up the bees. If not that, then I would guess they are preparing to swarm, since it is early in the day to be robbing.
I doubt they are trying to take over the weak hive. What kind of action is happening at the weak hive during all of this? You say they are at war. Are there an unusual number of bees contesting at the entrance? Have you reduced the entrance?
A swarm of bees in the air look and sound like a small tornado. If that's what you mean by everywhere, then you had a swarm.
No offense but it is difficult to get a grip on what is happening as you are kinda all over the place on your post.
You may or may not have seen your hive swarm, or abscond.
Check on things tomorrow and check back in for more direction, pay attention to specifics.
A swarm is very noisy as Brian pointed out, you literally can hear them buzzing, all of them.
...JP
Thanks for the responses, everyone. I went back to the Puyallup Fair and talked to a representative of the Pierce County Beekeeping Association for a second time. She asked me to check for "sawdust" at the entrance to the hive and explained that the "sawdust" was actually wax from robbers uncapping honey. When I got home, there were indeed wax pieces all over the place. Since it was dark and there was no activity, I opened up the hive to see how bad the damage was. There isn't much left. There is a pile of wax at the bottom of the super and I doubt I have a hundred bees left. I closed it all up and completely blocked the entrance in case the robbers come back before I get out there in the morning (I'm pretty sure they got it all, though). So, tomorrow, I am going to combine what is left into a single box and combine it with my other smaller swarm. I've been talked through how to do this and am hoping it will go well.
To backtrack on a few of your questions, by "all over", I meant that I could track numerous bees everywhere I looked. They were not in a 'tornado' formation but did indeed look like something had stirred them up. And the sound was incredible, almost like being in the middle of a hive yourself. I have no idea what may have originally gotten them moving, but the result was the robbing of the weak hive. As for the reduction of the hive entrance, I had originally done that three weeks ago when I saw the numbers declining.
I feel bad about not being able to have done more for them; it was bad timing (of course!) that this all occured on a day that my husband and I had promised the kids we would go the Puyallup Fair (Washington State's biggest).
On a happier note, I did learn a lot from you all about posting information. I felt like there were so many details that I tried not to get wordy, which resulted in my "all over the place" rambling. Sorry about that.
If I could ask one last question? There is no food left in the hive. How to I combine these bees with my other hive (my understanding is this box will be the top one above the newspaper), when they have no food stores left? Maybe use a top feeder? Okay, that was two questions........Thanks, again!
If you only have a few hundred bees left, I would just shake them into the other hive.
I would check to see if there is a queen in the robbed hive before I would do anything.
Quote from: Irwin on September 07, 2008, 08:57:48 AM
I would check to see if there is a queen in the robbed hive before I would do anything.
Yep, check for a queen, but chances are they absconded. Usually with so few bees, these bees are what remains without a queen.
I agree, if no queen just shake these out, chances are the other hive will accept them, plus with so few bees in the top box its an invitation for wax moth.
Just think if the other hive did the robbing they have lots of stores now, perhaps not, depends on what the vanquished hive had, but check that hive and make sure they have plenty stores, if not feed.
...JP