Woe is Bee

tillie · August 28, 2007, 11:59:56 AM

Well, I'm not having much of a good year this year. I looked out on the deck and noticed while I was eating breakfast that there were no bees flying in and out of one of my hives. It's the hive that had two queens earlier this year. I opened it up quickly before I went to work and almost all the bees were gone. I think they haven't had a queen for a while and probably just dwindled down to the baseball sized handful that were there.

I've been swamped with teaching and work at my office and haven't looked into the brood box on that hive for a couple of months. In addition the combined hive from a hive that was being robbed with the hive created with the second queen was also all gone. That hive was robbed out and I think the bees died without a queen. I couldn't feed them because every frame of honey I added kept being robbed out.

So in two weeks I've lost essentially two hives.

I'm going to clean out the mess - there's wax moth stuff in the first empty hive - and plan for next year. We're in the middle of 100 degree days - extra hot for Atlanta - and a dearth. So my going forward plan for my two remaining hives is to check both of them for queens and then feed like mad into fall. Next year instead of nucs, I'm going to order packages for two additional hives and see how I do with those.

Woe is bee,

Linda T in Atlanta - sad and blue

annette · August 28, 2007, 01:28:40 PM

Linda

I was wondering what happened to you these days, and I was worried about you and missed your postings.

I am so sorry about the 2 hives. I don't know what to say. I just pray that your other 2 hives will be alright. You are still an exceptional beekeeper and you must keep on believing in yourself.

Keep us posted about the other 2 hives.

Sincerely,
Annette

tillie · August 28, 2007, 01:58:25 PM

Thanks for the support, Annette. I have a full time job and every year in August for a 5 week semester, in addition to my full time job, I teach in the Emory med school, teaching communication skills to the doctoral candidates in physical therapy - this year I rewrote my course, which took tons of time and I had 40 students in the course, which took even more time -

Every time the bees have a problem, I can always relate it to beekeeper error - and this certainly was. I should have been feeding all my hives. We are 17 inches down in rainfall in Atlanta and we've had over 100 degree temps for two weeks now - it's the worst summer ever. We have a watering ban so I can only water on Saturday mornings before 10 AM so my garden is dying, my bees are dying.

I can see how someone might go out to hives like mine this morning and say, COLONY COLLAPSE - because the bees are gone, but I know better. There were about 100 bees in the hive and they were clustered together, I'm sure getting the very last of whatever stores were there, although they weren't dead with their heads in the cells like the hive I starved. Clearly I should have figured out that there was not a queen, but I have hardly looked in the hives since my class started the last week in July.

So like every beekeeper error, I learn from this one and pick up and go on. I'd like the challenge of putting a package in a hive, so I'll order for next year. The other advantage of a package is that I can start them in all 8-frame mediums and that will be wonderful!

Linda T in Atlanta trying not to be discouraged

mgmoore7 · August 28, 2007, 02:03:29 PM

Sorry to hear this Tillie.

Cindi · August 28, 2007, 03:50:37 PM

Ah, Linda. I too am sorry to hear of this sad thing. Life can get so busy, that is 100% correct, sometimes things in life cannot be avoided. Don't beat yourself up so much, you have other commitments, along with your bees. You are number 1 and you must look after this firstly. Yep, there is next year, you have learned some lessons this year, sad ones, but you will learn by them. I make so many mistakes in my life, and I may have learned a tiny bit with them, I can only hope that. Good luck for next year, girl. YOu are still doing a wonderful job. Have a great life and day to boot!!!! Cindi

Kathyp · August 28, 2007, 03:54:17 PM

sorry about your hives. don't beat yourself up. lots of us have had a bad year even though we were home to watch. sometimes SH. next year is another year.

teaching communication skills....i know some docs that i could send your way....we could start with my husband :-)

JP · August 28, 2007, 04:20:11 PM

Tillie, Like Kathyp said, sh. Aint it the truth now. Gear up for next yr, and keep your head up. You did the best you could do with your hectic schedule. We all make mistakes and we all have busy lives. You cannot be in two places at the same time. See you on the forums! :)

tillie · August 28, 2007, 05:11:43 PM

I love the people on this forum - it's so nice to have a crisis in my bee yard, write about it here just 'cause I needed to talk about it, and get all of this positive support. You all are the best!

Linda T in Atlanta

Kev · August 28, 2007, 08:23:00 PM

Quote from: tillie on August 28, 2007, 01:58:25 PM
I teach in the Emory med school, teaching communication skills to the doctoral candidates in physical therapy - this year I rewrote my course, which took tons of time and I had 40 students in the course, which took even more time -

Linda, I'm with you. Cheer up. The gardners mantra is: next year it will be better.

I deal with hospital communications, so I feel your pain.

kev

tillie · August 28, 2007, 08:25:19 PM

When I got home this afternoon the cluster of 100 or so bees is now only 10 or so bees left in the hive. I had thought I would put the box on top of a good hive, with newspaper in between, but there's no point.

Linda T in Atlanta

Kathyp · August 28, 2007, 08:37:20 PM

they may be moving into the other hive on their own. my barn bees from last year joined my big hive. i could tell the difference because of the colour of the bees.

annette · August 28, 2007, 10:33:56 PM

Also, you have 2 good hives to care for. That is what I have now, 2 hives.

Put your good energy into these hives and they will be fine.

I depend on you and your videos.

Sincerely,
Annette

pdmattox · August 28, 2007, 10:38:42 PM

Sorry to hear the news. Surely things are going to turn around with the weather. I would feed as much as they will take. All we need is the rain from a small hurricane.

DayValleyDahlias · August 29, 2007, 12:59:00 AM

Ugh, Tillie, I am sad to read of this event...you teach me so much, here is another lesson, for us all...I look forward to "watching" you in your new chapter towards beekeeping...with success I am sure...

tillie · August 29, 2007, 08:03:19 AM

I woke up thinking about the hive that disappeared trying to think what I have learned from this.

1. When this hive swarmed so early in the season, I think I should have looked hard for the queen then in the bees that were left and kind of mothered this hive to make sure that all was well. The bees had probably swarmed at least a week before I noticed.

2. When these bees built crazy comb (this is the hive that colored outside the lines with the starter strips), I did monitor the comb building but not the brood production

3. When this hive had two queens, I put the queen excluder between the two boxes for a week to see if there were in fact two queens. At the same time, I opened up the brood box in the bottom. I believe that what happened was that allowed the bees in the bottom box to join with the bees in the top box and the top box queen was killed - maybe the bottom box queen as well. I think when I put the queen excluder in between the two boxes, that is all I should have done - not open up the brood boxes until I separated the two "hives".

So when I came back and there was young brood, proving a queen in both boxes at least a day or so before, actually I now know for sure that the queen in the upper box was gone and perhaps the queen in the bottom was gone as well.

I then monitored the upper box for making a queen and didn't pay further attention to the bottom box. There were a lot of bees in the bottom and they probably have been dwindling since then.

4. Also I think I need to provide more to a split than I did - when I took the top box off, I gave them a frame of new brood and eggs from another hive and a frame of honey but shook the bees off into their original hive in each instance. I think that left the new hive too little resources.

Ah, well, live and learn.

Linda T always learning about bees in Atlanta

Understudy · August 29, 2007, 09:09:24 AM

Just look at all the wisdom you have gained.
You will be able to teach a course on this. I am sure you have room for it in your schedule. ;)

Sincerely,
Brendhan

Cindi · August 29, 2007, 10:51:06 AM

Linda, your feelings of how you feel about our forum friends is the same as me. I have had bad things happen to my colonies now and then, I go to my forum and tell my friends about it. It is so good to have "someone" who can be there to listen to the venting that we must do to keep our sanity. I have family, husband, I can vent until the end of time....but....they are not "bee" people, they like the bees, don't mind them one little bit. But...again, they don't have this passion and love for the bees that I know we all share on this forum. So, all the wonderful comments of support that are given fuel us on, they make us feel like we haven't failed with our work with bees, our friends all make us feel good, keeping our chins up. Yeah!!! And don't that make your day. Keep on keepin' on Linda, and all the others that have worked so hard this year, lots with good stuff going on, others with stuff that makes ya go "huh, rats"!!!!! Have the best of this wonderful day. Cindi

DayValleyDahlias · August 29, 2007, 08:15:32 PM

Thank goodness for those of you who share your successes AND your non-successes...it seems that we all feel discouraged from time to time from occurances in the hive...hhhhmmm...life lessons too...

Moonshae · August 29, 2007, 08:27:53 PM

As unfortunate as it is, we learn more from our mistakes than our successes. Ask any scientist...he/she will tell you that the biggest opportunities for discovery are when experiments don't go the way they were expected. Failure drives innovation, and innovation generally drives success.