late season hive loss - what to do with leftover bees

[tandemrx]

Have 4 hives.  . . . . well, "had" 4 good hives.

Just found out my "good" hive of a month ago is a goner.

When we did hive maintenance a month ago this hive was busting over with bees, but it was a mess and we had to do a lot of clean up of cross comb between the hives . . . and bees were everywhere . . . . afraid in putting everything together or somewhere in there we killed the queen.

Now there are at best 1000 bees left.  No sight of queen.

Should I just dismantle the hive and brush any left over bees onto the other hives?  The are all pretty much right next to one another (by a couple feet).

I don't want to put the 2 boxes on the other hives - create more spring issues for me - and would prefer to not go into winter with 3 hive bodies on a couple hives.

Any input appreciated.

[Michael Bush]

At this point it really doesn't matter too much what you do, but if you put the honey on a hive (or store it somewhere the bees can't get to it) it may help prevent robbing and save them a lot of work.  The remaining bees will most likely drift to other hives or starve but the other hives don't really need more bees (most likely) as the harvest is over.

[tandemrx]

Wouldn't more bees help bolster cluster size for winter?

I would think in cold climate like Wisconsin it would be useful to have as big a cluster as you could so they can better stay warm and have better chance of queen and some extra's make it through the winter.

Mostly I can't stand to watch 500 or more bees starve or go on to certain death (even though 90% of them will probably be dead in a few weeks anyway no matter where I put them or what I do with them).

Good idea about taking away honey so they don't have to defend it - didn't think of that . . . although there is little honey left in the hive.  That was my first clue as it was heavy a month ago and populous, so I thought they were well set to go through winter, then when doing last maintenance I picked up the top box and it was very light . . . I didn't notice there not being many bees because it wasn't warm, so I thought they were staying deep in the box.

You just never know with these bees.  This hive went from being my "lazy" hive the first year . . . producing little to no honey and never building up well, to being a great hive this year, to . . . . not being a hive at all  :(

I am going to break down the hive today and brush the bees over to another hive, then bring the boxes back next year and either add a nuc or package.

[bigbearomaha]

what to do with leftover bees

One could put them into a bowl as cereal.  They stay very crunchy in milk and have lots of protein.

Collect them into a bag and when you get stuck in the snow this winter, pour them out as you would sand or ash to gain traction.

Use them as replacement checkers

put them all into a pillowsack, shake them up really good then toss the unfastened bag into the living room with your miserable excuse of a (fill in the blank)

glue them to a posterboard into a wonderful design. (hey, if they can have macaroni art, why not bee art?)

that's it, I'm tapped out for now.

Big Bear

[GJP]

Tandemrx,

Same thing happend to my strongest hive!  I did a mite check in August with little or no sign of mites.  Took off a supper full of honey and left one on with the 2 hive bodies like the U of MInnesota tells you to do.  Then with the cold late September and October we had, I jsut left them alone.  Bumped them one day with the weed eater ( 40 degrees) and had lots of bees well up.  Did a lift (weight) check a few weeks later and noticed they were kind of light.  Decided to get a hold of some candy boards and went in last weekend with the warm weather to figure out how to setup the candy boards with my top entrances and the hive was empty.  Maybe 50 live bees which I suppect were robbers from my remaining hive.  Found some dead bees and some evidence of mites ont he bottom board but nothing serious! 

I'm hoping my other hive makes it thru and I can do a split in the spring!

Greg
Westfield, WI