what to do with queenless / drone full hive

tandemrx · October 10, 2010, 08:44:47 PM

Although we are enjoying a warm spell in Wisconsin, the juncos have arrived, so things will change soon.

I have a hive that is hopeless.

It went queenless probably about a month ago, and I didn't notice until after I pulled my supers and state inspector came through (about 2 weeks ago) . . . and he agreed, chock full of drones, no eggs for weeks now.

So the question comes, what do I do with this hive.

It doesn't make any sense to combine it as it is 50% drones and 50% old workers. I could use some of the drawn frames and what is left of the honey frames in some of my other hives to bolster them before winter.

Inspector said he would brush the bees into a bucket of soapy water and be done with them.

That would be tough for me to do. :'(

Hate to leave it to cold weather to kill off the hive, mostly because it still has a lot of bees in there and no doubt they will stick their heads in every cell with nectar honey and die there, making a mess for next hive to have to deal with.

Could just shake off all the bees from the frames a ways away from hives and let them fend for themselves, but would hate for that huge population of drones to find their way back to the other hives and use resources they need to get through winter.

What do others do with late fall dead-outs.

thanks :(

hardwood · October 10, 2010, 09:13:24 PM

Shake them out. If your other hives don't want the drones they will deal with it.

Scott

iddee · October 10, 2010, 09:51:20 PM

Ditto what hardwood said.

tandemrx · October 10, 2010, 10:07:43 PM

how far from the hives? 50 yards, 100 yards, 1 mile?

Only reason I worry is that the hive right next to this one is one of the weakest hives I have (although it is making a late valiant come-back) and afraid they may be over-run by drones if I shake them off nearby

thanks for the opinions

hardwood · October 10, 2010, 10:11:39 PM

The further away you shake them the longer it takes for them to find a hive and settle. 100 yds is good.

Scott

iddee · October 10, 2010, 11:58:27 PM

I shake at 10 feet in front of the hive I want them to go to.

BjornBee · October 11, 2010, 07:36:48 AM

I don't understand the whole 100 yard or 10 ft comments.

The workers, no doubt older and experienced flying outside the hive, will go to the old hive location, then circle in on the nearest hive. So for the workers, 10 feet, 100 yards...it makes no difference.

As for the drones, they will go into any of the remaining hives that they can.

I know you said you would hate to kill them. But keep in mind that these bees have raised lots of drones....and probably lots of mites. The normal functions of the hive have also been less than ideal. Any mite load will be tranferred over to the remaining hives after the shake-out. Your soft heart may be detrimental to your other hives.

Shaking out weak, sick, diseased, or mite infested hives may work at other times (like mid-summer) of the year and hives can overcome many things. Shaking out those same hives in October has much bigger impacts on healthy hives ready to go into winter.

Creamhorses · October 11, 2010, 08:06:46 AM

Sad to hear, but I wouldn't worry about the drones, because they're going to get kicked out of all the hives shortly anyway.
I'd take the advice of the inspector. Yes, it's unpleasant to have to put them down, but you are their keeper, and this kind of thing goes along with the job.
A fellow beek might be able to do this for you?

jmo
Dave

tandemrx · October 11, 2010, 08:12:59 AM

So Bjorn, you would recommend the "soapy water" shake out method? or what is your suggestion.

As a side note as I look at my notes on this hive:

It was queenless with many supercedure cells at the end of August. Not sure why a queen never took hold there.

I also did mite counts in September and this hive had very low mite counts (5-10 mite drop in 24 hours) both before and after I put in a formic acid treatment (I was treating all hives in the apiary as most of my other hives had moderate mites and I figured this hive had a queen on the way). I looked at some drone larvae as I was cleaning up the hive yesterday and did not see mites on the few drone larvae I took out).

There were actually 2 "queen cells" in this hive yesterday, but I think they were just trying to make queens from drone larvae as there were only drone larvae and capped drone cells and a few very sporadic small larvae (and again, while a decent population at least 50% are drones). I could not find any eggs and I looked through 80% of the hive - and I am good at finding eggs. Figure even if by some miracle it was a true queen cell (and based on the frames it would be a miracle), any queen that would hatch would unlikely find a mate this time of year.

thanks for comments everyone. I haven't ever had to decide on the fate of a fall hive that has failed

tecumseh · October 11, 2010, 08:29:10 AM

tandermrx writes:
There were actually 2 "queen cells" in this hive yesterday, but I think they were just trying to make queens from drone larvae as there were only drone larvae and capped drone cells and a few very sporadic small larvae

tecumseh:
your reasoning is sound. once a hive has become hopelessly queenless they will draw cells from almost anything including cells of pollen.

most time when confronted with a hive like you describe I simply stack it on a very populated hive and let the girls figure it out for themselves. as a general rule I am more concerned about protecting the comb as any concern I might have for the bees in the box.

fish_stix · October 11, 2010, 12:20:01 PM

You could shake all the bees through an excluder then give the drones the soapy water bath and combine the workers with your other hives. One thought though; bees are an agricultural endeavor. Agriculturists sometimes have to put down horses, cows, dogs, sheep, cats chickens, bees, or whatever. You do what's necessary to keep the farm going! What will you do when the inspector says you have a hive with AFB? You'd better be willing to kill them immediately and burn the hive or you will have a bunch of hives with AFB.

tandemrx · October 11, 2010, 04:34:08 PM

I enjoyed all the comments, interesting notions and good information. I am not that squeamish that I couldn't "do the deed", but it is sad to see this once decent hive about to die one way or another.

I do see trying to save the workers as a an exercise of futility (they are probably too old of worker to offer much to any other hive but a resource drain), but just out of morbid curiosity Fish-Stix, how would you "shake all the bees through an excluder"?

I guess I could see placing this 2-deep drone-rich hive over a queen excluder and another deep and then using a fume board with bee-go and driving the workers into the bottom hive body and then combining that hive with one of my other hives. (again, probably more effort than it is worth, but just curious how one would go about it if it was to be done).

I don't think bee-quick would have the power to really drive 2 deeps worth of bees into another box. I use bee-quick for supers, but especially when it isn't really warm the stuff is slow to act and doesn't empty a super very completely . . . . does what I need it to do mind you, but it isn't as powerful as bee-go.

I guess I never even thought that drones can't make it through an excluder. Guess in some ways I thought that a queen in part rarely went through an excluder, not that it was absolutely impossible for her to get through, but because it was just too much hassle to try to squeeze through or more hassle than a queen should be subject to ;).

I guess drones are probably "thicker" than a queen, so maybe they can't get through either.

tecumseh · October 12, 2010, 07:10:57 AM

more like the process of making up packages than you situation, but the basics are the same...

you tack an excluder on the bottom of an empty box. you place this empty on another empty to get some distance above the ground. you remove the offending box and place it on the box with the excluder smoking the bees extremely heavy at the top bar. you then shake (actually I think bump is a better word since actually you are not shaking anything but more like bumping the top box by dropping it 2 to 3 inch) the bees from the frame. if you have 10 frames in the box you will want to remove 1 frame before doing the shake, bump, drop thingee.

charlotte · October 15, 2010, 03:00:55 PM

I am in WI also, and had a hive like that a few weeks ago. Thought about getting a queen, but it's pretty late for all that. I run 3 mediums. What I did was divvy up the stores between the three boxes and did a newspaper combine of one med each onto three other hives. They have been moving the stores down and hopefully in a week or two I can remove that extra medium off the 3 hives. I figure a boost of workers is a good thing and as far as the drones, they are busy kicking them out anyway. The extra stores were a bonus for the other hives too. In the spring you can always make a new split. Good luck!