Very weird.....now a dead hive.

Dexterjc · April 01, 2012, 08:26:35 PM

So, two weeks ago I wrote a post about my two established hives being light on honey and full of bees. I decided I would take three frames from each established hive, and take those 6 Frames and put them in a new third hive. The established hives got empty frames in the third, sixth, and ninth position in the upper brood box.

Starting from about the third day from this manipulation I noticed that there was an unusual amount of dead bees at the entrance of the new hive. As the days have going on I've noticed more and more dead bees. They didn't take the sugar syrup I gave them and they still have 2 or 3 pounds of honey that was capped. The weather has been rainy here for the last two weeks and I have noticed a lot of bees that are dead on top of the hive is well.

No sign of robbing and no obvious answer as to why this hive has all but died and the other hives are still doing fine. I will probably take a final look at the hive the next dry day I get, there are still about one quarter of the bees left in the hive. These frames were packed with bees on them when I took them from the established hives. Very strange.

AllenF · April 01, 2012, 09:24:09 PM

How cold has it been at night? You broke up the cluster if it has been very cool at night.

Dexterjc · April 01, 2012, 09:52:03 PM

It has been mild, at least here in Oregon. Didn't get below 36 here at night. Been in the high forties low fifties as a high, but around here, that is prime flying temps, except it was raining.

BlueBee · April 01, 2012, 10:08:09 PM

Bees will normally cluster at temps of 55F and below unless their hive is warmer inside. That is one of the reasons I use foam here, but that may not be the cause of your problem.

When you moved the frames to the new hive, any field bees on those frames would end up flying back to the parent hive. That might reduce the amount of bees able to keep the brood heated on your cold 36F nights. So cool temps and missing field bees could have resulted in some chilled brood.

Normally I would suspect robbing in this scenario, but if you didn't find a bunch of ripped off cappings, then I guess we'll have to rule that one out.

Got me. Sometimes when the size of the colony gets too small in the spring, they just seem to peter out.

Dexterjc · April 01, 2012, 11:35:46 PM

Yeah, I know I am no expert, but I was not expecting this. Would the young bees that were left be more prone to flying out in an inopportune times (raining) because they had such a strong instinct to aquire stores and killed off their population by flying in the rain? We just had the wettest march in the history of Oregon, so lots of stuff blooming and not alot of time to forage. I could understand if the hive died because they couldnt keep up with the brood I left them, but I don't know why there was an uneven amount of dead bees toward the front entrance of the hive and many out on the landing board, at one point the dead had all but blocked the entrance reducer, I had to clear this three times now. I didn't find any aborted larva on any of the days, and at least 3 frames were filled primarily with capped brood, the frames that had the most eggs and uncapped brood were placed in the middle of the hive. And as I stated before, no ripped open cells and they never really were all that interested in the sugar syrup, in contrast, my lightest established hive ate up the syrup in 3 days and my other hive that had more stores as barely touched theirs as well. Very odd.

Kathyp · April 02, 2012, 12:04:40 AM

QuoteSo, two weeks ago I wrote a post about my two established hives being light on honey and full of bees. I decided I would take three frames from each established hive, and take those 6 Frames and put them in a new third hive. The established hives got empty frames in the third, sixth, and ninth position in the upper brood box.

what did you do about a queen? you are farther south, but i have no drones here at all.

Dexterjc · April 02, 2012, 12:13:47 AM

Well, I had one reserved from a local guy down here just in case my girls didn't get the job done, I have had drones for about a month and a half now.

jredburn · April 02, 2012, 06:54:14 PM

Did you have two boxes on the new hive? Did you put three frames in each box?
Since they cluster in the center and move up, you MAY have starved them. They will not move down to feed from a cluster and they will not move horizontally very far either.
Just my $.02.
Regards
Joe

Dexterjc · April 03, 2012, 10:27:01 AM

I had all 6 frames side by side in the 3-8 position in one deep with a feeder directly above them. In looking at the frames yesterday it looks like 100 percent of the bees died on all but 1.5 frames. They didn't really take any of the syrup. And we're completly empty of stores. I had put frames that had at least 1/5 capped honey in their upper corners, and a couple of the outer frames had 80% of one side filled with uncapped nectar. I am thinking that regardless of this, the bees starved. There were several frames that had 50-60 mature bees that were just emerging from their cells and died with their proboscis out. Hmmmm I don't know what I could have done differently, I treated them like a new package.