Somethings Up...
Been loving the Observation hive and things appeared to be rolling right alone, I'm even getting half decent about being able to find the queen. :laugh:
Bees active, bringing in pollen and nectar, queen laying, etc. etc. All appeared to be good!
Anyway, the first brood started to get capped last Wednesday, all on frame #2, they capped a large majority of the frame and it was a good looking laying pattern...figured I was on scheduled to have my first bees emerge by April 1st. In the last couple days I started noticing some bees uncapping some of the cells and carrying out Pupa. I really didn't give it a second thought, I just figured it was good hygienic behavior. That's until today when I noticed that they've almost uncapped the entire frame...I'd estimate a good 80% of the capped brood, if not more has been uncapped.
Thoughts? What could be causing this? Might it self correcting and clear up?
Frame 3, which is the next frame she laid on is now probably about 60% capped, I'm curious to see what happens with it.
i had this happen more than once in my OB hive and it let to it's demise on one occasion. there is another post on here not long ago about the same. i don't have an answer. might this happen in closed hives and we don't notice because the queen has so much more room to lay? don't know. can only tell you that you are not alone.
Not in an OB hive, but I too have had two colonies do this recently! I thought it was a hive beatle explosion, but when I went in, there weren't too many beatles, just 3/4 frame of capped brood pulled out? Maybe it has to do with a smaller population hive, the two were both fairly weak.
Any chance they are short on pollen/honey?
Quote from: Bush_84 on March 26, 2014, 09:32:11 AM
Any chance they are short on pollen/honey?
Not sure, they haven't really built up much stores, but pollen is coming in and getting stored while it appeared that they were storing some nectar also. I put on a quart feeding jar with 1:1 yesterday about noon just in case that was the issue, but as of this morning they hadn't showed it a ton of interest, they've dropped the level about 1/2"...I guess I'll just wait and see.
No experience with observation hives but before I see an abscond cause of shb they haul the brood out and tear down the comb trying to regain control. Probably not you issue if you see no shb. If it is shb you will see maggots before long. Good Luck.
Jeff,
Could they be chilled? I mean thr internal temperatures in the cluster cal reach the 90's. Kinda hard for them to cluster on a single frame. IDK, just a thought.
Quote from: sc-bee on March 26, 2014, 02:51:23 PM
No experience with observation hives but before I see an abscond cause of shb they haul the brood out and tear down the comb trying to regain control. Probably not you issue if you see no shb. If it is shb you will see maggots before long. Good Luck.
sc,
Yeah..Really don't know what it is, but pretty confident it's not SHB. I've spent more than a fair amount of time observing the OH since I loaded it on 3/13 and I have not see a single SHB as of yet.
Quote from: RHBee on March 26, 2014, 03:31:53 PM
Jeff,
Could they be chilled? I mean thr internal temperatures in the cluster cal reach the 90's. Kinda hard for them to cluster on a single frame. IDK, just a thought.
rh,
Really don't know...but I've posted both here and on BeeSource and chilled brood seems to be the most popular theory so far, by far.
However, I borrowed my buddies Infrared thermometer and it's showing the surface of the glass on the outside ranging from 85° to 89° on the upper frames where the bees are gathered....So, I'm thinking my temperature should be OK.
So you installed them on the 13th? It must be something with the oh.
Bush,
My bad, I just double checked my records, it was actually the 8th that I loaded it. So, its been about 2 1/2 weeks...This was a swarm from one of my hives, I shook them into a Nuc, gave them a little time to make it into the box, and then brought them up to the house and immediately loaded them into the OH. Thought I was on easy street, for a while there...I left them pretty much totally covered up for the fist 3 or 4 days to try and avoid disturbing, I didn't want them to abscond. Spotted the queen laying not long after that, then developing larva, and then capped brood....thought I had it made. Till they started all the uncapping.... :(
Moots,
Really sorry to hear your having the same problem that I just had. I still do not know what caused it. I had lots of pollen and I was feeding them because they had used almost all of the capped honey. They removed all of the uncapped brood first. They blocked the entrance tube with dead bees twice. The next thing they did was line up all facing straight up and hardly moving, like zombies. I did find the queen was still alive and put her in another hive. The only bees that were alive seemed to bee newly hatched bees. There was just a few of them.
I have seen what looks like it might be a similar situation in another hive but the bees are still alive but no larvae in the hive and dried brood in the bottom pan. The queen is also in there.
I thought I had poisoned them with bad sugar but that was not it because a queen graft nuc was not killed by it.
Wish I knew what killed it.
Jim
My guess is chilled brood. I heard this problem happening before in observation hives. If the population looks low I would add more bees.
You'll just have to set the temp inside to 95.
I had 1 hive do this about 1.5 weeks ago, then when we checked it on this past weekend, we had a bunch of queen cells. I know they didn't swarm because we the queen was clipped. Not sure if they killed her or if I killed her or what. But they did pull a ton of brood around that time.
Temperature was not the problem, nor was the number of bees, this hive survived the winter in this hive with a fist sized ball of bees. Winter temps were in the 40s and 50s. The temps when this happened, were 65 or higher with the deep frames covered with bees and they had just started covering the medium frames.
Jim
Just wanted to provide an update on this situation...I'm afraid there's really nothing new and nothing good to report. The cycle continues...everything appears normal..Bees are busy, lots of traffic, bringing in nectar and pollen...Queen is busy laying, larva getting fed, brood getting capped.
All good, except the fact that a few days after being capped the bees are still opening and removing all the brood. I say all, at least a good 95% of it.
I was hoping that whatever the problem is might self correct, but it's not looking good. If this trend continues the hive will simply dwindle away.
Guess I'll keep "observing"...Not sure what else can be done!
Per chance you may have used a toxic glue in the construction? If so it may still be giving off enough fumes to mess them up.
Quote from: GSF on March 31, 2014, 11:04:17 PM
Per chance you may have used a toxic glue in the construction? If so it may still be giving off enough fumes to mess them up.
GSF,
Nope....Only used Titebond III , non-toxic, and the same thing I've used on every bit of bee equipment I've built. :?
I'm baffled! :? :? :?
I forgot to mention that I found carpenter ants in one of the hives that this happened to. I'm pretty sure that the ants come in at night. Something to check for.
Sounds like a very hygienic hive.......but, I would check for any signs of mites.
Hmmmmmm???
You don't suppose that you are observing CCD??
You have a hive that appears to bee busy, but there will come a day when all the older bees will get old and die off. As they are likely close to the same age their demise will likely be within a day or two.
As all you can do is keep observing.....take notes and pics. This could be an education for all of us.
carol, with ccd the adults leave and never come back.
moots, have you thought about adding a frame of capped brood from a healthy hive to see if they do the same thing?
Quote from: 10framer on April 01, 2014, 03:51:41 PM
moots, have you thought about adding a frame of capped brood from a healthy hive to see if they do the same thing?
10framer,
No, I had not! But I think that's a pretty interesting idea. If I can find some down time, I might give that a try. Unfortunately, I"m pretty jammed up time wise for the next couple of weeks.
I'll either give that a try or just let it run its course and see what happens!
Moots,
Last night I put a nuc in my home made ulster OH to do a school bee presentation. It has a open screen bottom and an 3/4" opening with an adjustable open/screen/QE devise. I put the OH on my bar top to have it ready for the presentation. Late last night the bees were running and started removing open brood from their cells. My wife pointed out that the entrance was packed with bees behind the screen. I realized that putting it on the bar directly caused it to be sealed air tight. I raised it up on the 4 corners and after a while they calmed.
I recommend you check out how much ventilation on your Oh. I am pretty sure this is what happened to my large OH. The bees had closed up the top vents during the winter and I noticed when I cleaned it out that they did open one of them. Maybe too late. I think the dead bees blocked the feeder entrance and the main entrance, blocking most of the air flow.
Let me know if this could bee your problem also.
Jim