I have top entrances and I noticed in more than one of the hives with two boxes, the brood is in the top box and the bottom box has mostly empty comb. I suppose it could make sense if bees want the brood near the entrance. But anyway, I believe I need to feed them. So should I switch boxes so the empty comb is on top and then place an extra box on top of that to feed?
An interesting note, there's one hive, with lots of bees hanging on the outside, with some new white comb drawn. I hope they're not robbing it from the others. The weaker ones have a reduced entrance and I've never noticed robbing attacks.
IV noticed at times on feral hives during cutouts that they well have brood comb closer to entrance and the food stores further back. I would just feed them. What are temps running. They may move brood area down when temps lower to keep them away from air flow. The new comb could be getting ready for fall flow if you have one. Is the comb outside boxes or in unused area of hive?
John
D. I've never used just top entrance, but would think that feral hives will build up or down depending on situation.
Most feral hives build down fro the inside top of the hollow tree. the brood chamber usually moves down as it grows.
When they build inside our buildings, usually in shallow spaces, they usually build from the entrance back. In vertical walls, again they build down.
You do not need to move them down to feed them but for winter, if they do not move their honey over the brood, you will probably want to rearrange it so that the honey is over the brood so that as they use their food they can move up into a new feed source where their heat has already warmed it up.
Jim
I see I kind of merged my one sentence. I was trying to say one hive was doing well with lots of bees hanging outside. Inside they were drawing white comb.
Thanks all for the advice. I will feed as they are and check before winter.
After some negative degree days a week ago or so, it got up to 52 today and I had been noticing one hive did not have bees flying in and out. I looked in and gobs of dead bees. This is the hive that was drawing new comb, it didn't have swarm cells nor did I split it, they started a third box drawing comb but no honey, and had some honey in the second last I looked before winter. The bottom box, while not full of honey, had quite a bit on most of the frames. But the bees in the second box up had their heads in the cells, and the ones above them were trying to get their heads in, all packed tightly together, and all dead.
Did I mess up? Should I have had moved the bottom box up, or a different year and they might have been fine? Of course too late now, but trying to learn for next time. And do bees make mistakes like this? An accident or a weeding out of those who genetically make bad choices? I'm worried about the original box I was asking about now. After I fed them, their second box had quite a bit of capped sugar water in it.
Quote from: Duane on December 28, 2016, 08:11:39 PM
Did I mess up?
Very hard to say. You make no mention of a queen. Did this hive swarm in August and the virgin not make it back? Bees in the top of a hive is not unusual if the top box is full of honey. If it has brood in it by August or empty comb something is a miss and I would say it is too late to fix it.
Am I understanding that by August, if they have brood in the top box, something is wrong, and there's no point in trying to correct it? Such as swapping boxes and feeding a lot? I had forgotten about sawdstmakr's advice about making sure honey is above them before going into winter. Might that have worked?
Anyway, another warm day or two, and I see bees flying in and out. Since I know it's dead, I try my best to distinguish between that hive and my others. I see bees sitting at the entrance, I see them grooming one another, and it looks like some are fighting and defending the entrance. I see no difference between it and the others. So I get a veil and open it up, and yes, they are still dead. Probably just being robbed out what little bit was left (I had divided up most of the honey in the bottom box).
I found it interesting, that if I hadn't been paying much attention, I would have thought all the boxes were still good, and come spring, suddenly it's dead and not know why. Is there no way to tell from the entrance activity whether a box is dead or alive? What am I failing to observe?
Well in my case it is obvious. We have cold clustering temperatures for more than a month. When it warms up to flying temperatures the bees are out in full force except for the dead hives, there is nothing. They ones that are out are relieving themselves. They cannot rob from the dead hive because the honey is too cold yet.
In my case I could completely take apart the dead hive and do whatever. No smoke, no protection at all even though there are thousands of bees in the air from the other hives. Occasionally you will get a bee to land on a frame or yourself and you can just shake or blow them off. They don't sting or head butt you.
So as soon as you get clustering temperatures robbing has ended. If you see bees at the entrance most likely the hive is alive. This is my observation.
I'm trying to second guess myself and think I didn't look at it, but I had that whole hive apart, attempted to shake the bees out of the comb, gave up until later and took the honey out, left the dead bees, and put it back together. When I peeked in after seeing activity, the dead bees still had their head in the cells not moving. I do keep thinking maybe they are alive, but there's just no way. Or they were really dormant in slow motion when the others are out flying about and I had all the frames out looking at them.
Just take the frame and gently tap it against a tree trunk. Most will fall out and none will fly away. They are as dead as they will get.
>I have top entrances and I noticed in more than one of the hives with two boxes, the brood is in the top box and the bottom box has mostly empty comb.
This is normal whether you have top or bottom entrances. I ask people here in Nebraska and they all say that's normal here. I asked a group of 240 beekeepers in Iowa if they saw the same there and 3/4 of them raised their hands...
So back in August, should I have tried to rearrange them? Or wait until just before winter? It seemed to have caused a serious problem with no honey above them.
>So back in August, should I have tried to rearrange them? Or wait until just before winter?
How would moving all of their stores around help them to find them...?
Oh. I guess I was thinking of the one that died, if I had moved the honey from the bottom box above them in August, they could move into it. As far as the one with no stores below them, I had fed them. Still not much in the bottom, and I have put dry sugar above them. I will check today when it's supposed to get above 60.
So what should I do when they are in the top box with brood? The end result of the one box is they died with honey below them. Unless this is just a happenstance, or a weeding out of the week, I can't help thinking something done differently would be a different outcome than dead.
Quote from: Duane on January 24, 2017, 10:40:08 AM
So what should I do when they are in the top box with brood? The end result of the one box is they died with honey below them. Unless this is just a happenstance, or a weeding out of the week, I can't help thinking something done differently would be a different outcome than dead.
My guess is something went wrong in the feeding back in August. The brood nest could have got plugged. No where except up for the queen to lay and she wasn't done yet. I am not a feeding guru but I think that the queen needs to cut back or stop before you do the heavy feeding to back fill. Were you using the right ratio?
Sometimes bees die of indecision.
"Be decisive. Right or wrong make a decision, The road of life is paved with flat squirrels who couldn't make a decision."
Yes, I was using 2:1 sugar. They had two boxes without much honey. Would they backfill the brood nest before filling the box they weren't in?
I like that about the flat squirrels. Sometimes I feel like that trying to decide things.
Now here's another issue. I had divided up the honey from that hive and placed frames right over the brood nest of another box. Today I look in and there's some bees with their heads in a frame off to the side, a few others here and there in patches, but right above the nest nice capped frames of honey. In the lower box, lots of bees with their heads in the cells, dead. I have a hard time seeing in the comb, but I couldn't see any new brood in there. So they could have moved up. And there was honey on the other side of the frame most were on. And off and on between when I added and today, there were some halfway warm days they could have moved stores around. At least I would think so, but maybe the bees didn't.
Is this another case of, sometimes these things happen? Don't know what I could have done differently there.
They can't move the honey if the honey is 40 degrees. It doesn't matter what the air temperature is. No different than trying to feed them syrup at 40 degrees. They can move it a short distance if the cluster is on it because within the cluster it is 90 degrees. It is not that the bees are stupid but they can only do what they can do. I would consider the bees stupid if you didn't do anything but if you go in the hive and start shifting things around at the end of the season you better know what you are doing because two cooks spoil the broth.
Quote from: Duane on January 24, 2017, 08:20:50 PM
Would they backfill the brood nest before filling the box they weren't in?
Is this a trick question? If they are in a box it is the brood nest. It doesn't matter what you think it is.
I think he means, would they backfill the brood nest first while there was an empty box above the brood nest.
Empty box? Or empty drawn comb? I assume when he said they went up and put brood in it, it is not empty anymore. If they were being fed they will put it were ever they can. It happened to me last year when I put an extracted box on top of the hive late in fall. I just wanted them to clean it out and get the last bit of honey for the winter. They went up, queen laid a few eggs and they never went back down. I keep finding more ways to wipe out a hive.
Quote from: Acebird on January 24, 2017, 08:32:30 PM
They can't move the honey if the honey is 40 degrees. It doesn't matter what the air temperature is. No different than trying to feed them syrup at 40 degrees.
For some reason I never realized that. I should have. We had some 50 degree days, but might have taken awhile for the honey away from the cluster to get up to that.
They were in the bottom box, used up their honey, moved into the top box laying brood with empty comb in the bottom. I was asking if they would fill the brood nest they were currently in when there was more space elsewhere.
The question is, come next August and I see a similar thing (provided the rest of my bees don't die!), what should I do?
This situation should only occur if you have a dearth long enough that the bees cannot collect a surplus. In this case put an empty box above and feed like crazy. They won't put honey or syrup below the nest if there is space above. The decision to remove the bottom box is iffy. I would resist that.
Looking over the thread again, I think the confusion was over timing of feeding. I didn't start feeding any until I saw a problem. One was empty comb below them, and the other had honey below them. I see what you mean if I had started feeding while they were in the bottom box, they might have filled it and moved up for more room. But they already had before I fed.
I was thinking about horizontal hives, where bees are supposed to move from one end to the other. Sometimes it works out. Sometimes not. So here, I had honey directly above them [that is in the second box that died after taking honey from the first box that died], and they still died. If I had a horizontal hive, and they still died, I would expect someone to say that's why, I need to have vertical hives. But maybe sometimes, things happen and it has nothing to do with hive configuration.
Trying to make sense of all this, I start looking back at the history of my bees. I realize this is an inadequate sample size and so cannot make a conclusion, but still it is interesting thinking about. I bought two nucs. One is still alive, I tried to split it but it never worked. Maybe original queen, maybe it swarmed and I didn't know it. The other nuc, I had split off a couple of frames the first year, and then that split started raising queen cells this year. I then split them up. Here's what's interesting. The original nuc and the first split have died. The three second splits are all still alive. Maybe a random occurrence given so few, but maybe the southern queens are not so adapted to winters and after two generations of mating with local drones they are?
Honey bees are extremely adaptable. They can deal with any cavity you give them or they can find on there own. If you want the most help stick with a Lang hive because that is what most people have and it is the industry standard in this country.
>I was thinking about horizontal hives, where bees are supposed to move from one end to the other. Sometimes it works out. Sometimes not.
Same with vertical hives... sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes there is a lot of honey that isn't in contact with the bees and they starve with honey in the hive.