Got home from Bud's place at 4am. Got up early this morning to check my hives before work and lo and behold, my two cut outs from late last week had absconded. It's my own dang fault too. I always cull the extra unused comb and any honey from my cut outs in an effort to reduce the transfer of SHB with the already stressed colony and then feed 1:1 for a while to help them establish. I include a frame or two of drawn comb so the queen can get to work too.Well, I must have just spaced out getting ready for the trip or something and forgot to fill the feeders before we left.
These were two really strong colonies and, since we're between little "mini flows" here right now, I guess they got a little hungry and decided to head for a better place...at least that's the only thing I can come up with. Anyone have different thoughts? Maybe they just didn't like me :? It wouldn't be stress from robbing because they had 0 stores. Varroa and SHB weren't an issue and both queens seemed to be in good shape.
Any ideas are appreciated...maybe I can prevent this in the future.
Scott
I am glad you made it home safe from Bud's I had a great time.
In regards to your cut out.
Put an excluder between the bottom hive box and the entrance board. This basically makes it a queen includer. The hives may try to abscond but if the queen is in the box they will fly back. Leave this on for at least two weeks. Continue to feed the sugar water.
What it seems like happened is they got stressed from the cut out and wanted to get out of there. They drank a bunch of the sugar water and filled themselves up so they would have reserves when they bolted.
Set up some swarm traps so if it happens again they might be inclined to fly to those and you can try again.
Sincerely,
Brendhan