Depleted stores

rober · November 15, 2011, 01:06:08 PM

a month ago i inspected my hives & everything looked really good. some brood honey in the bottom box & a little brood in the center frames of the top box & the rest was FULL of honey. hives were very heavy. up until this time i had an empty super on top of 3 hives with a division board feeder in the super. yesterday i was installing 3/4" blue foam board in the outer covers & found that 4 of 5 hives had lot's of bees but had nearly depleted the upper box of honey. when lifting them they weighed about 30 #'s. 1 hive still had a full feeder. we've had warm weather & they have been out almost every day. the 5th hive still had a lot of bees but not nearly so many as the others. the frames in that hive were fully laden with honey. i am now concerned that the 1st 4 hives will not have enough stores for winter. i'm going to fill the feeders again & see what happens. the daytime temperature is supposed to stay in the 50's & 60's for another week & be in the 40's & mid 30's at night. i put out an empty 5 gallon bucket this morning & the girls are all over the honey residue.
i'm wondering why the 4 hives went thru so much honey so fast & why if they needed stores the 1 hive ignored the full feeder. also- 3hives were started from nucs this year. the hive with full stores has been the slowest developing of those 3 hives. i'm not sure what difference that would make it is also the only hive with a standard bottom board. the other 4 have s.b.b.

AllenF · November 15, 2011, 07:58:41 PM

Was the syrup 1:1 or 2:1?

rober · November 16, 2011, 12:34:10 PM

2:1 maybe 2.5:1

BlueBee · November 16, 2011, 02:53:45 PM

Since you stated there was not much brooding, I guess that leaves robbing and high calorie activity.

You might want to look at the combs in the light hives for evidence of robbing vs regular food consumption. Are the cells ripped up as with robbing, or are they still intact?

If not robbing and not brooding, then that leaves food being consumed for high calorie activity. Flying is obviously a high calorie activity. If you have a lot of bees flying and finding no nectar sources, they'll have to re-fuel their tanks from the stores inside the hive.

Kathyp · November 16, 2011, 03:08:51 PM

you sound like you are still warm enough to feed during the day. i'd get some jar feeders on there with the thickest syrup you can make. you may want to pull the jars at night so that they don't drip with temp changes and so that you can keep them warm to pop back on the next day. if they are that low, you will need to get as much in to them as you can in short order.

after that, consider putting dry sugar on. that will work as emergency feed and help absorb some of the moisture from the hives.

rail · November 16, 2011, 05:21:07 PM

I made this little saw horse feeder for feeding on warm days. I remove the feeders at night.

It has been working well and fun to watch them race back and forth to the hive. It has cut-outs for five mason jars.

rober · November 16, 2011, 09:06:52 PM

there are none of the telltale signs of robbing. it would be unusual for 4 strong hives to be robbed while the 5th hive with the fewest bees was not robbed.
it was in the 40's today so i did not feed them. tomorrow will be mid 50's do i'll feed them then. i'm still thinking about pulling a frame & putting a division board feeder in the hive box. i do not have any other feeders. if it gets too cool the bees will not go up into an empty super that's stacked on top of the inner cover. at what temperature do you quit opening the hive?

Kathyp · November 16, 2011, 11:07:45 PM

get some jars or buckets that don't leak. then you can feed on top of the frames or the inner cover and not be digging in the the hives all the time. i like large jars. poke a few holes in the lid and set them over the inner cover. you don't need to open the hive that way.

FRAMEshift · November 17, 2011, 09:07:23 AM

Quote from: rober on November 16, 2011, 12:34:10 PM
2:1 maybe 2.5:1

I don't think you can make 2.5:1 so there must be some misunderstanding somewhere. You want the heaviest syrup that you can conveniently make. For me that is 5:3. If you work at it really hard, you could make 2:1. 2.5:1 is not really possible. Even if you could get it into solution, it won't stay in solution at room temp. We are talking the ratio of sugar to water, right? Twice as much sugar as water?

rober · November 17, 2011, 12:54:57 PM

well maybe i misunderstood the ratio. i'm interpreting 2:1 as 2 parts sugar & i part water. 1 batch was thicker than that 2:1 so i called it 2.5:1, possibly 3:1. it was nearly as thick as honey.

rober · November 18, 2011, 08:04:44 PM

checked the hives today & the syrup was untouched. the bees are clustered in the upper hive & quite a few are on top of the frames at the hole in the inner cover. i drizzled some syrup on the inner cover at the the hole. some bees did start to work the droplets. I'm not sure what else to try.

CapnChkn · November 20, 2011, 01:09:49 AM

Strange thing I have noticed is the bees don't seem to want to get syrup that's above them. I know this is going to make some people itch, but I found they like the entrance feeders. I can take the syrup and put it over them where everything should be right, and they'll ignore it. If I take that same syrup and put it in a "boardman" feeder they can't get enough.

My guess is the house bees sense it as a spilled syrup. If you drizzle some around they clean up what's there, and it never occurs to them to try a little higher. If it's down on the bottom they need to get it back in the stores.

rober · November 22, 2011, 08:29:36 PM

yesterday it was pretty warm so i pulled a frame on 2 hives & put a division board feeder in each upper brood box early in the day. by late afternoon it looked like they were taking some. the weather was cool & rainy all day & i had a full slate so i left them alone. i'll check tomorrow & if they are taking syrup i'll do the same with the other 2 hives. i'm thinking that what happened was that the flow was over & we had mostly warm weather & since the hives had a lot of bees they just ate everything up. i assumed since everything looked so good the last week of september that they were set for winter. had i checked sooner i would have seen what was happening & could have fed them them accordingly.
live & learn eh.

AllenF · November 22, 2011, 09:41:13 PM

Yesterday with all the warm weather I checked up on my hives and found 3 more dead outs. They did not even make it through the first cold. My fault for not treating them I guess. All to make a better bee. Some of the still living felt light so I pulled 5 supers out of the freezer to feed back to the bees. Just stacked them on the top of a bottom of one of the deadouts relocated out of the yard. Put the deadouts in the freezer to chill. Reducers are still on all the hives and short days should keep robbing down.