Starved bees next to food :(

lilprincess · January 20, 2019, 12:52:03 PM

I went to check on my bees and they starved to death. I'm so upset. It was a good strong hive. I had out sugar cones in the hive for them but they never touched them. When I checked on them a couple weeks ago, a saw a bee on one of the cones so I thought they knew where it was. I had taken two frames out from the side and put the cones there. What could I have done differently?

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Live Oak · January 20, 2019, 12:53:55 PM

Did you treat your bees for varroa mites in the Fall? If so, what did you use?

lilprincess · January 20, 2019, 01:21:28 PM

Quote from: Live Oak on January 20, 2019, 12:53:55 PM
Did you treat your bees for varroa mites in the Fall? If so, what did you use?

I used that nasty chemical gel. I had mites last winter. This didn't look like mites. It was a strong hive, all with heads stuck in the empty comb. :(

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SiWolKe · January 20, 2019, 01:48:27 PM

Quote from: lilprincess on January 20, 2019, 12:52:03 PM
I went to check on my bees and they starved to death. I'm so upset. It was a good strong hive. I had out sugar cones in the hive for them but they never touched them. When I checked on them a couple weeks ago, a saw a bee on one of the cones so I thought they knew where it was. I had taken two frames out from the side and put the cones there. What could I have done differently?

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How many stores did they have?
Did you feed them in fall?
Were they able to fetch water? They can?t eat the sugar cones without water if there is no brood and therefore not much condensation in a hive.
Do they still have a queen? If the queen was lost in fall they die out.

lilprincess · January 20, 2019, 03:37:04 PM

Quote from: SiWolKe on January 20, 2019, 01:48:27 PM
Quote from: lilprincess on January 20, 2019, 12:52:03 PM
I went to check on my bees and they starved to death. I'm so upset. It was a good strong hive. I had out sugar cones in the hive for them but they never touched them. When I checked on them a couple weeks ago, a saw a bee on one of the cones so I thought they knew where it was. I had taken two frames out from the side and put the cones there. What could I have done differently?

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How many stores did they have?
Did you feed them in fall?
Were they able to fetch water? They can?t eat the sugar cones without water if there is no brood and therefore not much condensation in a hive.
Do they still have a queen? If the queen was lost in fall they die out.

I put the cones in, in the fall. They didn't have much for stores, so that was why I put in the sugar. They had a live queen at that point. I haven't dug through the bodies to see if they still did in the end. How would I add water? I saw videos of people adding sugar to hives for winter supplementings. But they didnt say anything about water. The bees were insulated from the wind but not entirely blocked off so that they could still have ventilation and acces to the outside if they needed it.

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SiWolKe · January 20, 2019, 03:55:34 PM

Quote from: lilprincess on January 20, 2019, 03:37:04 PM
Quote from: SiWolKe on January 20, 2019, 01:48:27 PM
Quote from: lilprincess on January 20, 2019, 12:52:03 PM
I went to check on my bees and they starved to death. I'm so upset. It was a good strong hive. I had out sugar cones in the hive for them but they never touched them. When I checked on them a couple weeks ago, a saw a bee on one of the cones so I thought they knew where it was. I had taken two frames out from the side and put the cones there. What could I have done differently?

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How many stores did they have?
Did you feed them in fall?
Were they able to fetch water? They can?t eat the sugar cones without water if there is no brood and therefore not much condensation in a hive.
Do they still have a queen? If the queen was lost in fall they die out.
I put the cones in, in the fall. They didn't have much for stores, so that was why I put in the sugar. They had a live queen at that point. I haven't dug through the bodies to see if they still did in the end. How would I add water? I saw videos of people adding sugar to hives for winter supplementings. But they didnt say anything about water. The bees were insulated from the wind but not entirely blocked off so that they could still have ventilation and acces to the outside if they needed it.

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Ok. Bees can?t survive winter without havin a lot of honey stores in fall, depends on your location, mine need minimum 15kg but I let them go into winter with 25-30kg always so I have no emergency when weather is bad in spring. The sugar cones are used for early spring emergencies but not as winter stores. So they truly starved. I?m sorry for your loss.

This stores must be fed by giving them sugar syrup in late summer so they can dry and change this to honey and cap it. Fall is too late for this sometimes. The long lived winterbees are bred in fall and they should not do all the work of foraging and drying.
If you harvest, supplemental feeding is a must! But most package bees which have to draw comb need to be fed too, this depends on your flow situation.

The bees forage for water if temperatures rise above 8-10?C but there must be water available ( not frozen) and no rain falling or they will not fly. Condensation water is taken too but there is condensation water only while breeding and the bees must be able to break the cluster to use this water and the sugar cones. Cluster breaks when it?s above zero in a strong hive.

If you want to educate yourself about beekeeping here is Michael Bush?s website:
http://www.bushfarms.com/bees.htm

lilprincess · January 20, 2019, 04:19:18 PM

Quote from: SiWolKe on January 20, 2019, 03:55:34 PM
Quote from: lilprincess on January 20, 2019, 03:37:04 PM
Quote from: SiWolKe on January 20, 2019, 01:48:27 PM
Quote from: lilprincess on January 20, 2019, 12:52:03 PM
I went to check on my bees and they starved to death. I'm so upset. It was a good strong hive. I had out sugar cones in the hive for them but they never touched them. When I checked on them a couple weeks ago, a saw a bee on one of the cones so I thought they knew where it was. I had taken two frames out from the side and put the cones there. What could I have done differently?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk
How many stores did they have?
Did you feed them in fall?
Were they able to fetch water? They can?t eat the sugar cones without water if there is no brood and therefore not much condensation in a hive.
Do they still have a queen? If the queen was lost in fall they die out.
I put the cones in, in the fall. They didn't have much for stores, so that was why I put in the sugar. They had a live queen at that point. I haven't dug through the bodies to see if they still did in the end. How would I add water? I saw videos of people adding sugar to hives for winter supplementings. But they didnt say anything about water. The bees were insulated from the wind but not entirely blocked off so that they could still have ventilation and acces to the outside if they needed it.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk

Ok. Bees can?t survive winter without havin a lot of honey stores in fall, depends on your location, mine need minimum 15kg but I let them go into winter with 25-30kg always so I have no emergency when weather is bad in spring. The sugar cones are used for early spring emergencies but not as winter stores. So they truly starved. I?m sorry for your loss.

This stores must be fed by giving them sugar syrup in late summer so they can dry and change this to honey and cap it. Fall is too late for this sometimes. The long lived winterbees are bred in fall and they should not do all the work of foraging and drying.
If you harvest, supplemental feeding is a must! But most package bees which have to draw comb need to be fed too, this depends on your flow situation.

The bees forage for water if temperatures rise above 8-10?C but there must be water available ( not frozen) and no rain falling or they will not fly. Condensation water is taken too but there is condensation water only while breeding and the bees must be able to break the cluster to use this water and the sugar cones. Cluster breaks when it?s above zero in a strong hive.

If you want to educate yourself about beekeeping here is Michael Bush?s website:
http://www.bushfarms.com/bees.htm

Thanks for the help. The summer was so wet and rainy here that they never had much of a chance to build up their stores. And our winters in new England dont let water thaw much.

Each year I learn more. I just wish the bees didnt have to suffer through the learning curve.

Thanks for the link. I'll also be going to the local bee keepers group. I had a long standing commitment before that has since been moved. So I'm hoping that will help.

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SiWolKe · January 20, 2019, 04:46:32 PM

We all make mistakes. Please hang on.
Good luck!

cao · January 20, 2019, 07:52:42 PM

Quote from: lilprincess on January 20, 2019, 12:52:03 PM
What could I have done differently?

Hindsight is always 20/20 as they say. If they were light on stores in the fall, it would have been better to feed them sugar syrup then so they could store it where they wanted it. Any dry sugar or fondant feeding is IMO a last resort to get them through the winter. Was there any capped honey left at all. I have had some hives starve with honey a frame away from the cluster. If it is cold enough, long enough they aren't able to move the cluster to reach the winter stores. Also if the cluster is too small, they can't keep themselves warm enough to move the cluster as needed.

Quote from: SiWolKe on January 20, 2019, 04:46:32 PM
We all make mistakes. Please hang on.
Good luck!

And sometimes even when we don't, bees still die. That is their nature.

Bush_84 · January 20, 2019, 10:40:59 PM

In my experience long cold snaps are killers. When you study the bees wintering strategy it becomes clear what happens. The colder it gets the smaller and tighter a cluster gets. It reaches a point where it can?t contract any further and simply has to work harder to stay warm. In this situation a cluster is now covering less area thus less possible feed stores. Strike number two is that they consume more honey due to increased metabolic demand from trying to keep warm. Strike number three is the length of the cold snap. A hive will eat honey it has access to and starve with honey a couple of inches above and a com over. This is the biggest advantage in keeping bees indoors in the winter. Any amount of prep cannot prevent this from happening. Even a big hive with a lot of excess honey can succumb to this.

SiWolKe · January 21, 2019, 02:15:02 AM

Quote from: Bush_84 on January 20, 2019, 10:40:59 PM
In my experience long cold snaps are killers. When you study the bees wintering strategy it becomes clear what happens. The colder it gets the smaller and tighter a cluster gets. It reaches a point where it can?t contract any further and simply has to work harder to stay warm. In this situation a cluster is now covering less area thus less possible feed stores. Strike number two is that they consume more honey due to increased metabolic demand from trying to keep warm. Strike number three is the length of the cold snap. A hive will eat honey it has access to and starve with honey a couple of inches above and a com over. This is the biggest advantage in keeping bees indoors in the winter. Any amount of prep cannot prevent this from happening. Even a big hive with a lot of excess honey can succumb to this.

That does not happen in a healthy hive which has high domes like in my pictureon every comb.To promote the building of the domes the bees must be restricted to one deep brood box ( depends on your configuration) before feeding in late summer or before they store for winter using a good flow.

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This isolation from stores happen when the bees started breeding because they will stay on the brood cells and honey is moved to the cluster only with a temperature above zero.

In a mite ridden hive the brood dies in the cells and the bees don?t move away from those patches which never hatch. Then it happens that the clusters becomes separated from each other and freeze on different combs. You find small clusters on more than one comb.
But in this case you see some capped cells in a spotty arrangement left in a dead hive.

Bush_84 · January 21, 2019, 04:39:51 AM

So says the person who lives in southern Germany. Where I?m from we always seem to get a week of weather where we get a high of zero or worse (this is Fahrenheit not Celsius mind you). This is made worse when a hive has a patch of brood but I?ve seen it without brood as well.

SiWolKe · January 21, 2019, 06:00:06 AM

Thanks for correcting this.

Acebird · January 21, 2019, 10:18:19 AM

Quote from: lilprincess on January 20, 2019, 12:52:03 PM
What could I have done differently?

Maybe nothing that would help. This is nature, not all things should live. If they didn't store enough honey where you live then my feeling is that they were destined to die. That is the way nature lays it out for the honey bee. Hopefully you will get some more bees that work harder to survive.

SiWolKe · January 21, 2019, 11:54:29 AM

Quote from: Acebird on January 21, 2019, 10:18:19 AM
Quote from: lilprincess on January 20, 2019, 12:52:03 PM
What could I have done differently?
Maybe nothing that would help. This is nature, not all things should live. If they didn't store enough honey where you live then my feeling is that they were destined to die. That is the way nature lays it out for the honey bee. Hopefully you will get some more bees that work harder to survive.

Depends on how you started the hive and wether you harvested. Always give bees a chance until they are adapted.
Catching a strong swarm in swarm season with a mated queen and a good flow for some time might make a difference. Bees have to adapt to the location first.

lilprincess · January 21, 2019, 12:24:33 PM

It was such and awful summer I had to supplement them with sugar water in mid summer. And I didnt get to harvest anything.

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SiWolKe · January 21, 2019, 02:25:57 PM

Quote from: lilprincess on January 21, 2019, 12:24:33 PM
It was such and awful summer I had to supplement them with sugar water in mid summer. And I didnt get to harvest anything.

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It could happen anytime there is a bad season. We are beekeepers and responsible for the bees in our care.
It?s different with feral colonies or wanting to be a bee haver. Then you might leave them to nature.
As long as you are the one to manipulate them and own them you are responsible. IMO

I did not feed my established 11 hives this summer when we were in a drought, but I fed my 4 new packages. They had to build comb and used up the food frames I started them on.
I wanted the numbers to be strong enough to go into winter as established colonies and able to store some honey for winter.

In late June a co-worker bred from my best tf queen and he created 4 splits to give back to me, one was with the old queen. I gave two splits with daughters, mated, to a co-worker to expand his beeyard.
I advised to feed though they all had comb, for it was in the drought.

He has had the same opinion as Ace and did not feed, I fed mine. Mine are still alive, his never thrived and died in late fall, the small number at the end was robbed by neighbor colonies.

After this experience I will never give away a split for free. It was a gift and he let them die on purpose.

LiL you did not let them starve on purpose. Learn about them now, take the advise from your association, get some help and enjoy your bees!

van from Arkansas · January 21, 2019, 08:02:51 PM

Ms. SoWolki: let me begin by saying how much I appreciate your post and others. I just like the folks on the other side of the pond.

Subject: small hive beetle. In your pic of the brood frame with capped honey I see what looks like a small hive beetle. Top row, very top row on the open wax cells which do not have honey. There appears a black spot, to me, a small hive beetle hiding in the cell. Is that dark spot a beetle? Sure looks likes one.

Those beetles can destroy a hive in my area. I have not lost a single hive to date from the beetles but this lack of loss is due to my constant efforts to rid, control the beetles. In the southern US, the beetles can pose more of a threat than varroa.

I believe Germany is cool enough to lighten the threat of the small hive beetle. Are my thoughts correct?
Blessings

Ben Framed · January 21, 2019, 09:46:06 PM

I see that also Mr Van, I hope its not!

SiWolKe . That is a beautiful frame of honey and brood!! Excellent!!

SiWolKe · January 22, 2019, 02:30:28 AM

Hi, Van,
the spot is a bee`s rear ( I scanned the original pict.) but thank you for commenting, now I know what to watch when the SHB comes. We don?t have it yet.
Thanks for your kind words, I appreciate them very much.

Call me Sibylle!

Thanks Phillip.
I?m treatment free so I do not often see frames like that. Mostly they are spotty and VSH behaviour to be seen.
There are two reasons to have such a broodnest appearance in my small enterprise: a non-resistant colony not fighting the mites and many mites under the cappings that time of year, or a resistant colony which went a step further and did eliminate the mites before winter breeding started. Let?s hope for the second reason