UPDATE doomed hive--now what?

Lunawriter · July 15, 2010, 11:50:21 AM

I've posted here before that I thought I might have a hive with laying workers. I had the state apiary inspector come out and she wasn't as familiar with top bars hives and said she couldn't be sure, but she thought I had a queen as she could see eggs and larvae. She said to go back out in a week or two and see what my ratio of workers/drones was. Well, the drones have it. I'd say they are at least 50% of the population.

Please don't give me a hard time for not keeping on top of things and recognizing early warning signs and all that. I'm very new to this and tried my best. The hive has never been strong and never seemed to do all that well at building up their new home. This is just the icing on the cake. At this point, what should I do? Just wait for them to die off? Rehome the workers in a new hive somehow by dumping all the bees nearby? I don't really know what to do. :( I hate that I failed them by being so uneducated.

VolunteerK9 · July 15, 2010, 12:13:22 PM

I think the basic principles are the same no matter if its a tbh or a hollow tree. Go back in to look for queen, eggs/and or larvae.If you cant find any of the above, find yourself another queen-quick. If they go to laying-worker scenario, which sounds to me like they have, its a little more difficult to deal with.

Kathyp · July 15, 2010, 12:46:28 PM

clarification? you say 50% drones. are you talking about brood or adult bees? what does the capped brood look like? if the capped brood is not 100% drone and scattered rather than in a pattern, that's not laying workers. if 50% of your brood is drone and the other 1/2 is worker, you may have a failing queen, or they may be going through a heavy drone cycle for some reason. perhaps in preparation for swarming? my hives had a huge number of drones early, but did not swarm (as far as i know).

more info and pictures would be helpful.

you didn't fail. you are learning. we all lose hives no matter how experienced we are. it's part of beekeeping and learning.

Lunawriter · July 15, 2010, 09:57:39 PM

Thanks so much for the responses. I didn't go back out today. It was so hot, I had one of my smaller combs collapse and I'd hate for that to happen to a big one. It's supposed to be a bit cooler tomorrow so I'll go out with a magnifying glass and really get a look inside the cells. At the moment, I'm not seeing much brood at all. They're fairly honey bound, it seems, and haven't built out any new comb in a couple of weeks. Why would that be? I'm feeding them on the recommendation of some other beeks since they were off to such a painfully slow start. I see some capped honey and some uncapped and I see some dark, wet looking cells which immediately makes me think of foulbrood, because that's just the way I am, but they are few and far between. I've never spotted the queen, but that may just be inexperience. The apiary inspector didn't spot her either, but thought she might be there.

I've joined two bee clubs but the closest one is just starting to get active again and the farther one is too far for anyone to come and check out my hive with me. I have a beekeeper friend that I'm going to try to help and learn from, but he just had major surgery and is 80+ years old, so it might be a while before we can get in there and get a good look at the brood. I helped him take off some honey supers before he had his surgery, but there was no time to go deeper since he had a doctor's appt scheduled.

I sure hate not knowing what I'm doing!

I'll try to get more information tomorrow and hopefully come back with pics, too.

Sparky · July 15, 2010, 11:07:52 PM

I do not have any experience with top bar hives so others may be able to help you better, but if they are getting honey bound as you say then you should be able to move some of the honey frames to the sides and pull your brood together and replace the spots from where the honey was with empty areas to build. If you are feeding and they are bringing in pollen and she is not laying worker brood then it sounds like you need to re queen.

Lunawriter · July 17, 2010, 10:02:48 PM

Thanks for your help, Sparky. :)

I have an update. I had a very kind beekeeper come over to check out my hive with me today. He backed up my thoughts that there is something wrong. He said he also didn't see any eggs or larvae (I thought I just couldn't see the eggs so there could very well be several per comb as far as I knew) and that my drone population was sky-high. He said that I had a lot of smaller drones as well that were probably laid in worker cells. We found an open queen cell as well which I'm unsure when it was hatched. We did not see a queen. His thought was that my swarm I collected in may had an aged queen who was past laying workers. He thought they might have tried an emergency supercedure and who knows the result since we couldn't find the queen that left the cell. He said he doesn't think I'm to the point of laying workers but that there is nothing happening in there that is good. So, on the positive side it was nice to know that I'm not just too blind to see eggs--there weren't any there, and I'm not too out of touch to not figure out something was wrong--something was. But on the major down-side, something is very wrong. :(

He said he didn't think requeening would do the trick as it's so late in the year and virgin queens take so long to lay and hatch out workers and my worker population is aging. He said he'd recommend introducing a nuc, or alternately introducing what's left of my bees into a nuc and transitioning to langstroth equipment. He has a nuc for sale, $70 for three frames. His business is managing beehives for people who want bees but don't want to manage hives themselves, so all future visits will incur a charge. He also sells equipment if I wanted to transition to langs.

I have very mixed feelings about what to do. I don't want my poor bees to die, of course, but I don't want to rush out and buy a bunch of equipment. So far, all I've bought were my veil and gloves. I built my top bar hive and caught a swarm, so spending money, especially in a hurry, rankles a bit. There's also the fact that I may have the opportunity to help another beekeeper with his five hives over the remainder of the summer after he's recovered enough from surgery to boss me around. And he's also offered to give me some of his excess lang equipment since he's downsized so much in recent years. So my thought is that I might try to shake my bees out in front of one of his hives and hope they might be accepted somewhere. Then I could dpend the summer working on his hives and learning and start fresh next spring after I have a bit more knowledge under my belt.

Anyone know how to introduce bees to a new hive without getting them killed. Is it possible? What would you do in my shoes? Thanks!

buzzbee · July 17, 2010, 11:08:21 PM

If a queen cell was hatched they may be on their way to requeening themselves. If you buy a mated queen and they are indeed queenless,she would be much quicker to start laying than one that needs to hatch and be mated.
If all your combs are filled with syrup or nectar stop feeding. The queen can not lay in nectar filled cells. She needs empties to lay in.
If you take pictures of the combs you can blow them up a bit on the computer and get a better look into the cells.rememer to keep the sun at your back when looking,it gets light to the bottom of the cell and makes it easier to see.
Brian Debray likens it to looking for a grain of rice at the bottom of a garbage can.Pretty good ananlogy I think.

Sparky · July 17, 2010, 11:27:07 PM

This is one of of disadvantages of mixed types of equipment. It would be nice if you could buy some frames of brood from your friend and get a mated queen to kick start your TBH. This type of hive is usually not the best choice for the beginner beek. After you have a few hives it will be easier to pull from your resources. If you can get a mated queen it would still benefit your hive to have some brood so she is kept healthy and keep the other bees calmer. If you had some topboards, that some sides and bottom boards could be fastened so it follows the contor of your hive, with bee space, the deep frames of brood could be cut to fit inside the frame and secured with rubber bands so they can attach the comb to the top. Hope you can work something out.

Kathyp · July 17, 2010, 11:59:51 PM

i don't think you are to late to introduce a mated queen. you need to do it now though so that you can go through a couple of brood cycles before the weather changes.

sarafina · July 18, 2010, 07:03:42 PM

You can get an Italian queen from Walter Kelly for $26 and that includes the shipping cost:

https://products.kelleybees.com/wtkprod/detail.aspx?item=815

I would call to make sure they have queens available. No affiliation - just a happy customer.

Scadsobees · July 18, 2010, 11:14:18 PM

That queen cell...you say it was open. Do you mean open as in that it looks like it hatched? elongated, brown, fuzzy edge?

If you mean hatched, I'd hold on buying a queen. All too many beeks get a queen, and then opening it up to put the queen in find out that there is already one at work. (I did that this spring!! well, a queen from a different hive, that is!)

Virgin queens are hard to spot, quick to move and will run off much quicker than a laying one will, and is quite likely that you just didn't see her.