Well that sucks, sorry. I agree with the other comments it's a rob out. There was "probably" a bee war (though see #4)and it was all likely done and over in two hours or so. I think these were the issues: 1. Too much space for a queenless colony/late split. 2. You put the new empty in between the lower brood chamber and the upper filled deep. 3. Combined with problem 2, you had a lower and an upper entrance and the upper was right into the honey stores. This encouraged robbers by signaling the hive was weak in population but had a lot of honey. 4. It was likely robbed out by the original Balboa hive....I'd imagine you had field bees in that split that returned to the original hive and signaled where their stores went. The first robbing was probably accepted by the split bees because it was their former colony mates covered with their old queen scent and they were likely "granted access". At some point the split colony probably either decided to fight or the other alternative is that they just starved after being robbed out. It's possible there was not a robbing war and maybe that's why you never noticed a robbing war but just minor robbing signs. I'm sorry, I feel like I let you down by not pointing out the potential problem. It crossed my mind at the time I saw you put that empty in the middle with a top entrance. I thought it was just me being paranoid and that you probably had enough population with the capped brood you put in there. This is where we both learned a lesson. I also encountered the scenario I mentioned in #4 last year. I made a split and sat the box in the same apiary and the original hive started robbing the split. I caught it in time and moved the nuc split a half mile away and it fixed it. I split that colony again this summer and they are doing fine. I had a pretty strong 4 frame nuc split get robbed out two weeks ago and it was queen right. Robbers can be stupid aggressive in the late and early season. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, avoiding setting up a situation like that is the best way to avoid it but sometimes we push the limits of what's "proper" and we learn a lesson that readjusts what we see as acceptable risks. It happens....easy come, easy go....learn from it and make it up next season. Don't let it overshadow your tremendous successes this year.
Brent Don't you beat yourself up either. I think we were all so excited about Frankenuc drama hive working out, no one really looked that hard at the Balboa split. Its not what we were all focused on. And only an experienced beekeeper would have seen the potential danger, and this is not something Jim had seen before. We all were so happy at the way things were working out, we missed the snake in the grass.
I'm with Brent. I had a hive destroyed in 2 days by robbing I created. Nothing of this sort but the results are the same. It's amazing how quickly a mediocre hive can be overwhelmed by the robbing masses.
I think the important lesson to learn from this is, If Vino trims his beard he loses bees. The beard is a good luck charm. Like Samson's hair. You think its a coincidence bees "beard out" on a hive or swarm and beard. Its because the beard is a secret. With trimming it you reduced your bee powers. Fix immediately before next spring.
Just a guess: they got attacked and robbed out. Not being queen right and losing foragers that returned to balboa lower they just couldn’t fend it off. Don’t kick yourself, sometimes hives just don’t make it. If you didn’t split them Balboa might have left in a swarm.
This is making the most sense to me. I did notice the population was smaller after the first week with some of the bees going back to Balboa Lower. The remaining bees were young bees and hatching brood. Add in a super full of honey and they were defenseless. Ugh! Beekeeper fail.
Beekeeping is a lot like Las Vegas. We take risks and gamble. Sometimes it pays off and sometimes it don't. If you win you win big. Losses are easily replaced in general.
You don't do a split in September. If you thought they were going to swarm, (they wouldn't have this late) you check for swarm cells. No swarm cells they won't swarm! You need to do some reading, totally avoidable!
I know nothing about bees and i am not going to act like i do.I just love watching the videos you made and watching you progress from a small farm last year to what you have now, i am sorry for what happened and i hope you learn from the mistakes made and grow!
Hive robbed out! Seen the exact thing five days ago in one of my weaker hives. Went through brood box and before I knew it the air filled with bees from other hives in a feeding frenzy so I closed up hive. The entrance was cut down to the smallest opening on the restrictor. Returned few hours later to find many bees still looking for entrance into the hive. Moved hive to another yard and the next day, upon opening, found bottom board covered as yours in dead bees. So many the small opening was blocked from the inside. I had no upper entrance, thankfully. This time of year we must be extremely careful when opening hives as well as restricting access to the weaker hives. My bottom board look just like yours and I know mine was robbed, for I watched the whole process. Must of been a major battle in the box with losses on both sides.
Had the same thing happen to me this year. Split my hive from last year, (year 1) and made 3 in early May. All were doing great and one just all died in late Nov. It was the middle strength wise. The weakest one is still ok.... Breaks your heart... Praying at least one makes it through... Like you , we are having a mild winter so far. Happy New Year.
Wow sorry to hear this. I feel your pain. The main thing is you learned from it and by far your end results are paying off. I watched my neighbors hive get robbed by his second hive. I told him what was going on and he basically ignore me. A couple weeks later he had lost the hive. I since then helped him and hopefully he learns from his mistakes. He is back up to 2 hives again.
I agree with most of the other comments. A classic case of "storage wars" honey bee style. the volume of dead bees looks like 1/2 the number of bees you would find in a healthy hive. It sucks, but it's a learning experience for all of us. thanks for sharing. ...my condolences!
You split the hive to keep them from swarming, if I'm remembering correctly, yes? As you found with the swarm that happened with the other hive, you aren't always lucky enough to find or catch the swarm, so while losing half the hive from doing the split sucks, at least you avoided Balboa swarming and leaving behind a queen cell/queen that might still have not managed to flourish and ended up losing both Balboa, and the half of the hive left behind.
Sorry to hear about this. :( How did you make out with your apples this year? My one producing apple tree died. I got about a bushel of apples and the rest fell off and the tree lost all of it's leaves. I will have to start with a new one next year. Sorry not on topic here.
Hi Marc, The surround seemed to work for a while, but we had a week of rain right at the tail end of curculio season and they attacked everything. It was a rainy summer and we had black fungus problems I had never had before. Then, heavy deer pressure and for the first time ever... PORCUPINES. Unbelievable. Porcupines climbing the trees ripping off branches. It was nuts. A few of our trees were totally stripped. We harvested zero apples. We're now re-thinking what the hell we're doing with apples. If we want to be serious, we need serious fencing and a serious spray regimen. Luckily, it was a great year for bees and blueberries!
Vino Farm Good grief, it's always something with fruit trees. Don't give up yet though! The deer and porcupines could be a real challenge though. On the surround, Just hope for a drier season next year. We had the same problem down here, RAIN RAIN and more RAIN. It just won't stop! I told my wife it will stop raining this year when it starts to snow. :( It was a no win situation on the entire east coast with surround. Our blueberries were very good too, but we didn't harvest any for storage because the freaking birds got most of them. The couple of handfuls I did eat were plump and delicious - super sweet and flavorful.
MarcsAdventures We have 75 blueberry bushes. We generally harvest and freeze until the chest freezer fills up and let the birds take the rest. This year we filled up the freezer in about 3 weeks and we weren't even half way through harvesting what was out there. The birds got fat this summer! I really want to solve the apple problems, but like grapes, I'm realizing organic solutions are really challenging. Bees are top priority right now, so whatever we spray needs to be bee safe.
Experienced beekeeper here. You split the hive and the queenless unit is demoralized because it has no laying queen. So it was unable to resist robbing pressure then the unit starved to death.
As stated above, the field bees from Balboa would return to their original colony (plus any younger bees already oriented to Balboa), leaving a reduced population in the split. The bees that did stay with the split had to protect and maintain a large area with that box in the middle...that's huge stress on them the way you put empty boxes, especially foundation in between like that. Maybe OK in summer with big population. Also putting empty and plain foundation frames in between the brood is stressful as well. So a young, demoralized, reduced population of bees trying to protect what they've got = robbing war or peaceful theft by known sister bees. Sad situation, sympathies. Ideally trying to do a split like that and have it requeen itself, the split would have to be moved several miles away to avoid field bees returning to original colony (with a drone congregation area close enough for the new queen to mate). Another consideration in letting bees raise a queen from brood is that it may result in an inferior queen. They'll build emergency queen cells over larvae and the oldest larva they choose will be the first queen to emerge to kill the others. Ideally you want a very young larva fed royal jelly from as early as possible to get the best quality queen, not one that was fed worker food for a bit. Oops, kind of late, just looked at dates.
Hi Jim, I sorry to see your video. The same thing happened to me about a month ago. I live near Boston. The hive was doing well - about 7-8 frames full from a nuc obtained a month previously. They seemed slow-moving so I had a look and there was a ton of bees dead and dying on the bottom board just like you showed. No sign of varroa on the screen board at all. I suspect perhaps pesticide poisoning. There was about 2 frames of bees (incl the queen) left. I fed them fresh syrup and a pollen patty and they perked up but never grew so I added those bees to my other hive (newspaper method and killed queen). A mystery.
Sorry about the lost hive. That has got to be frustrating. I have a question for ya though..... why save/ reuse components of the dead hive? Especially when you don’t know what happened.
It was a little risky and I will know when I check Balboa this weekend after those frames have been in there for a week. My gut told me it was most likely a robbing scenario and NOT disease... I'll see soon enough. If I was wrong, I will learn my lesson.
It kills the capped brood in a relatively clean and humane way. The frames are then put back into the hive and the bees will completely clean out the cells. If you leave dead brood out too long, it goes rotten and wrecks the wax.
I think they got robbed and then starved. I read the comments and some one said (too much room) they could not stay warm. My question to this is how does a hive in a tree stay warm when there is no way to shrink the cavity. I am still having problems understanding why we shrink our hives down in winter then add more room in the spring . I under stand if you have 2 supers of honey and remove one the bees could not build up an empty box so no replacement but I see and hear people reducing the hive size in fall "because the bees can not stay warm in a big hive and will freeze" when wild bees do just fine with all the (extra) room they have especially if they are in a wall cavity of an unheated garage. Thanks for any responces.
A 3 to 4 inch insulation of wood is way better than a 3/4 inch thickness of a box. Wild bees are still reducing the entrance of a tree trump. Wild bees maximize the amount of bees in the tree hive before they run out of room and they split up. Mankind is splitting bees so they space may be indeed to big for them to function properly. Mankind also takes honey so the space is even bigger after honey harvest.
That title scared the crap out of me.... My poor little heart. I thought the "ALL" in that title meant more than 1 colony. Sad to see this split not survive and will be interested to read what other bee keepers in your comment section have to say as i'm sure some will have useful insight to share. As sad as it is i'm glad it is just the one hive.
I know I'm two years too late, and I apologize if this has already been stated. I just took a course in beekeeping and one of the segments was what to look for with diseases and causes of hive failures, and this looks exactly like pesticide/ herbicide contamination example. Bees groom each other and touch each other, etc and when they fly through a chemical, they can bring it back to the hive and contaminate each other. We even have a website in our state that we can sign up for so that farmers (voluntarily) will notify beekeepers of when they're going to spray so that they can keep their girls looked up. Here, one of the problems is the wineries. Your channel is great, by the way.
i was amazed this fall when i added a wet box and made a tiny bee war, there were many dead when i opened the hive the next time. if it was weak and the powerfull hives came for them , it could all end very fast for them. In my case it was a powerfull hive and the wet box was actually above the other top board so i think thats why they managed to defend. Sorry to hear about this Jim.
A sudden bunch of dead bees is quite suspicious. In Georgia, we have a process at the Department of Agriculture to report sudden colony death. They even send a state inspector to collect sample and identify if a product or pesticide could have been sprayed on something the foragers have visited. I would suggest you contact the equivalent department in Massachusetts to see if a similar process exists.
We had the exact same thing happen to our hive last year almost to the day. Definitely not robbing as we had a full deep packed with honey. We had a strong, healthy queen and varroa count was very low. We had a rainy week and when we went back in, they were all dead. Just as you showed. We live in the PNW so damp winters are a challenge. I figured maybe it was too much humidity (even though we had taken all the precautions, but now I wonder....
Jim, we often look for another reason than ourselves as to why something bad happens to our hives. I've watched your temperatures every day and when you made the split, the nighttime temps were in the 50's, you're right, not freezing, but to bees, anything under 95 degrees is cool to cold. The brood need the warm temps to mature in a timely manner. So.. they vibrate to keep themselves and the ball warm, also warming the surrounding food stores. Having that empty super in the middle isn't like having a shelf in the house where when you want a can of peaches, you walk over and get them. The bee ball moves in whole up and down and around the hive. The outside workers, nurses, pass food from one to another through their begging action. It's the nature of things. Putting the empty box in the way of the stores basically left it invisible to the main chamber. They shook or vibrated themselves to death. Simple as that. Today, your warmest temp is 67, night will be 43. Think of these tiny beings having to make up 50 degrees of difference. Quite the task ahead. It's your 3rd year. I wanted to see you take honey this year, let them replace with feeding before winter. In this case, I'd worry on that, but I'd suggest heavy feeding now. They need the glucose, pollen patties will help. And don't let them run dry. The next 10 days at your place is not good bee weather, feed them from the inside. Have fun. See you on the next video. You might find this paper of interest. Smiles to you and your's. bit.ly/2zF40zf
the hives are simple to much for winter and the brood in the bottom?...not a good architecture idea...I always keep my bees squized in a 10 frame box to get the winter...Your comment in spot on.
Jim, I agree that the most likely cause is robbing. I have had 1000's of dead bees in and under a hive from a single event. As another poster suggested, Balboa lower half is probably heavy with stores now. I highly recommend the use of robber screens when making splits, especially anytime after June. No problem with new queens finding their way back in either, which is a common misconception. So sorry for you and the hive that fought to the death.
Hi there, sorry about your bees, that is very unfortunate and very sad. Don't be too disheartened, I hope that you will continued to build. Blessings!!!
Very sad to hear that. I can tell you by my own experience that I don’t split hives pass end of June. There isn’t a lot of food and a new queen (not matted) always has a risk of failing. Good luck. Is starting to get cold here 🇨🇦
Oh no! Just last night I put an empty shallow box on top of the brood box and put the honey super on the top of the empty shallow, hoping to give room for the queen to lay. Should I just remove the shallow box?
Edward Coffin The empty shallow box was for the queen? Not for honey? Is this in an apiary with other hives near it? Is the brood box super full of bees? Is the honey super full? Or mostly full? If all the above is a yes, I would be scared to repeat what may have happened here. I don't know if putting a second brood box on (perhaps under the first?) is a good idea for your area - weather and other bees are important factors. Give more information, perhaps one of the beekeepers can answer better.
I’m sorry about your hive. Thank you for sharing and helping us new beeks learn. Between your awesome videos and the comments, I have learned so much about bees and my own beekeeping instincts. Every day is a new adventure.
I make a lot of mistakes. They're not usually catastrophic and I do get very lucky... but whenever I can share knowledge, it feels good. Thanks for watching.
Queen War's with the Smell of others :-) Getting close to Fall there. No Drones to meet a Queen. In October until Spring. Making a Fall Split is hard. I left mine alone 2 Months ago here in Central Cali. They are doing well until Jan Feb here. Then it is time to Split before Swarming. Bee Pro Active.
The majority of comments vote on a robbing. I guess that makes sense just because of the quickness of it. I still wouldn't give those boxes to other bees without scorching them first, just to be sure. I do think you do great work though. Keep it up.
I am so sorry , Brent, it's so sad!! I was wondering, If those small openings were covered by other bees from the outside before they took the honey, would that cause them to suffocate? OOoooooh, that bothers me!!!!! Can a hive be that vulnerable? I was thinking of starting bees this summer, I better re-think this through. WOW!!! It seems like they were trapped in the hive. What can be done to protect the bees from being trapped in like that? Brent, I'm really sorry about what happed to your beautiful honey-bees
Thanks for the content. There is a ton of basic beekeeping videos but fewer good beekeepers making the judgement calls. This one didn't work but your comment section is worth reading.
So sorry! Personally, i would never reuse equipment from an unknown death or sickness situation. Set it asside, let it freeze over winter. Were there piles of dead outside the entrance?
No, they were 99% inside the hive. I had a gut feeling it was a robbing scenario. I'll know if there was a problem with the frames when I open up Balboa next. Thanks.
Don't feel bad. I lost all 40 hives in my bee yard in a matter of 3 weeks..And they were fed and all treated for mites regularly. I don't get it Prolly friggen chem trail poisoning.
@@vinofarm I'm going to switch to a Fomic acid mite treatment this year to in case it was mites that killed them. Since fomic acid kills mites in the brood cell.
It was a rob out, and then a starve out. This time of year they should be gaining weight for winter. This is a clear sign of a weak flow and hungry bees taking advantage of a hive that was split up and given too much space to occupy. There shouldn't be a super in between this time of year and they should be reduced to one entrance maybe 3-4 inches based on the hives strength. I recommend removing your supers and leaving what you want to have over winter very soon. Time is running out for feeding them up and them being able to cure the feed for winter. If you have a super full for each hive thats perfect.
This was the best comment at this point. Im not sure how soon temperatures starp dropping towards winter at Your apiary, Jim, but bees should be stimulated to build up brood with light syrup and then fed heavy syrup to be packed by summer bees, so that wintering bees are not exhausted before 'their season'.
That stinks! I agree with those that have already said it was a robbing incident and ensuing battle, and unfortunately they came out on the wrong side at the end. Very sorry this happened to you, don't let it get you down, learn from it and move on!
I had the same thing happen. I did a full box split and didn't look for the queen. Two days later it was dead just like yours. When I pulled the box off the bottom board the dead bees litteraly spilled over the edges of the bottom board. Sometimes if you look at the frames that had stores in them the wax will be chewed way back, sometimes almost to the midrib, where the robbers wanted every drop of honey. Robbed, then starved is my vote.
When it gets cold isn’t it true that they only need 1 box to keep warm? Anymore than one is to much area from them to heat. I’m new to all this, but my question is this, when winter starts to show its ugly face , isn’t that the time to start reducing everything back to one hive?
Every beekeeper has different opinions. I like 8 frame boxes with two levels (either two deeps or one deep + one medium). I have 11 of 12 hives alive at this moment... The one that died? It was in a single deep box. All my two-high hives are alive.
One of my five hives died this week and it looks just like this. It was a packed single deep 7-frame (I make my own). About a month ago it was raining all the time and the hive had a huge beard on it, so I gave them a medium super for more room but didn't inspect the hive. I think they might have raised some queen cells and swarmed, somehow failed with the new queen, and then succumbed to some disease due to being stressed and then got robbed out.
You can't expect that boxes and frames can be in use for years without accumulating increasing amounts of mold spores, bacteria, pesticide residues and other things harmful to the bees. I think beekeepers need to start using sanitizing practices of regularly rotating and cleaning boxes and frames, as well as limiting the swapping of frames and boxes directly from one hive to another whenever possible. Hand and tool cleaning between hives is another basic procedure to consider. Have spare 'sanitized' components available for routine hive modifications. Of course cleaning should be as harmless to bees as possible, steam cleaning, hydrogen peroxide, ozone, UV, sunlight, and perhaps very safe soaps. etc. Good luck. b.
Actually nature itself is utilizing cleaning practices, but beekeepers will not allow it. For example....wax-moth will destroy/eat wax combs and other bugs like roaches etc. will clean the mess up with bacteria to take care of the rest. It is a natural way in nature to to take care of old combs and for bees having to make new combs. and to interrupt diseases.
My Bee Soap doesn't let me down! ALL the same drama as any day time drama. Love, war, crime,....death.... I'm so sorry you lost that hive. That is never an easy experience. I hope you and your fellow bee keepers can figure out what happened. I'm on the edge of my seat as I anxiously await the next video. I need to know that you can prevent this from happening in the future!
Definitely an acute event, probably robbing since the other hives are fine and the entrance was wide open. I do have to say I think you should be reducing your hives' volume, not adding boxes at this point. The flow is over and it is time to condense them to get organized for winter. Love you videos, thanks for sharing!
Jim, I bet all there food was gone. This is what happens when you spread the recourses to thin late in the season, Im not criticizing, It happened to me once too. Start feeding anything that has a lot of unhatched brood or they will eat all the food when they hatch. They are growing girls. Lots of brood requires lots of food. Also they need good winter stores. Its do or die time. I wish you the best. I feel your pain! Pollen patties and syrup until it gets to cold for them to take. Good luck!!
Man thats horrible, my first hive of Italians went that route and I couldnt sleep for 3 days, totally ate me up because it was totally all my fault. Carry on, we're up against alot as it is, I love your insights and exploration!
Thank you for sharing this will help all beekeepers learn. I’m sorry about your hive. My two cents on this: too much space for a queenless colony and probably robbed out by the original Balboa hive.
Don't add a box as they cant draw it out this time of year, they won't be able to keep warm with that extra room, and you might start a robbing situation again on balboa. Hornets and wasps can fly and rob. Building up a box should not be the priority, shrinking down and consolidating recources should. I've had this exact situation happen to me last year. They died at the entrance defending all that space.
Julie Enslow that late in the season I highly doubt swarm cells were present. Even if there were swarm cells, probably old empty swarm cells, that late in the season you crush the swarm cells, those queens wont be able to mate anyway no drone congregation area that late. Reading and experience and find a good mentor.
They do not analyze samples (bees, wax comb, pollen, etc.) for the presence of viruses or pesticide residue. Also the results are getting send to the sender of the sample and to the local inspector.
I’m not a beekeeper but here’s my opinion. What changed?, the reducer. Also, all the honey was gone. Maybe they got trapped because the reducer was too sudden and drastic, then they consumed all their stores, then starved out. Seems weird that all this could happen in five days, but it’s still warm and their metabolism is still high.
So, so sorry to hear this! I have no advice to give about what might have gone wrong, but it looks like others have some great points. My only advice is this: If you have a dog, make sure to dispose of those bees someplace where the dog cannot find them. I had a hive die in the middle of last winter and I just dumped the bees out on the ground thinking I would clean up the area when we had a thaw. Well, we had the thaw, but I didn't get to the dead bees before my dog did. Apparently, dead, rotting bees are delicious. Who knew? Unfortunately he was seriously ill for about 48 hours after. Dead bees coming out of both ends! He's OK now, but man, you do not want to have to clean up that mess!
I am so sorry to hear of your colony tragedy. The same thing happened to me as I witnessed it happening 4 hours after my morning walk about to check the colonies. Yes, it is robbing. You can tell by the shredded comb cells. The invading robbers kill the queen first. I found the queen on top of a frame (obviously trying to escape).The residential bees panic and all hell breaks loose after that. The resident bees can't escape either if the entrance is too small because it is jammed with robbers. So all that is left when the robbers are done, is a pile of dead and dying bees in the bottom of the hive. I also believe that because there are so many bees in the hive at once, the resident bees also die from stress and heat. I was told that this type of robbing as well as usurpation of a hive, is usually caused by feral (Hybid Africanized) bees. One of my strong hives was USURPED as I also witnessed it happening at 10:00 A.M. during my colony check walk. The invading bees killed my queen took over the hive, then co-existed with the resident bees (they didn't kill that many oddly enough. The Italian colony just surrendered, perhaps because they knew their queen was dead). The invaders did not rob the hive at all. The queen and her invaders were definitely feral and aggressive. So I dispatched the feral queen and requeened with another sweet Italian (but had to endure the 6 weeks of aggressive ferals). I live in San Diego, CA which is the perfect corridor for the unwelcome and hybrid Africanized bees (thanks to the experiment gone wrong in Brazil 1950's?). I also have heard that these bees are learning to adapt to cold weather as they have been seen in Northern CA. I hope this information helps you and others.
Bummer dude! (*key thing - robbing = disease transmission)? What if there enough bees got stuck behind the entrance reducer - that no one could get out. - and they suffocated/starved, were not able to cleanse? (and they ate all the stores they had left too). You need drawn frames for the winter - no non-wax gaps in the hive. "blank frames" are not a good idea Send the bees to Beltsville!!! so someone can see what happened? Do you have yellow jackets? too... did they visit later? Might be a good time to get simple robbing screens out there? So that all stops. That's all I can think - sorry for your loss. Hang in there.
They were fixing to swarm so you want to split it as a swarm so in retrospect you have to simulate a swarm in which is the novinoff split its is in there nature to swarm that is why the novinoff split was introduced
Dude, sorry to hear about this. I have very little experience with this, but I concur with the collective; I think they were robbed and destroyed by your other hives. This wouldn't be CCD because they would just be gone, and the lack of all honey stores shows they were completely obviously plundered. Because some bees are still alive, I am led to believe all of the bees on the bottom board were defenders that didn't survive. Again, sorry about the loss.
Thanks, man. My gut thought was robbing, right off the bat. My awesome commenters confirmed my suspicions. I'm pretty certain that was the issue. This was a teaching moment for sure.
It might be a good idea to put that hive into nuc size boxes. I agree with the other comments of it being to late for them to fill out that upper box. Sorry this happened but there's a higher likelihood of them surviving with less space to have to heat over the winter without enough resources in the deep box.
This is what happened with one of my hives 2 weeks ago. Did a split and left couple frames of bees Queen-less with honey. I was surprised how quickly robbers killed guard killed some bees and sucked out all the honey. The rest of live bees went into near by colonies.
I would suggest you start to remove boxes from all your hives as getting late in the season now and colonies will be reducing in size and dont need all the added space to keep warm.
This weekend is condensing weekend and feeding has already started on the small hives. October for us starts to have chilly nights, but there are still many more beautiful warm days ahead.
If this is the one you think threw a swarm, I’m guessing a combination of robbing and decreased bees to warm all that space is what did them in. Still, you are doing great with all your splits this year!
Part of me has this odd feeling that they teied to swarm wile being robbed. I feel it was a mix of both. The entrance got blocked from dead bees defending the hive, when everything was gone the colony tried to swarm and got trapped. It sounds weird but i just get that feeling.
They had a second hole to escape from so not likely from that. They can also beard if too hot, so not likely that. Too fast too sudden, either robbing or pesticide or even cold from too much real estate to cover and keep warm if it was cold. Just too sad for words with no definitive answer is brutal. Hard to learn with SO many variables.
would have been interesting to see if the frame of brood that had bees still taking care of them, would have hatched into a good hive. If there were no mites, or beetles, the worst I think would happen, would be what dead brood there was being extracted and ejected. I'm willing to bet if there were bees taking care of them, then some were still alive.
If you don't know what it is, you don't know whether it is a disease either so I would not have put anything of that hive near another hive, until knowing what happened.
Hey, sorry to here about your hive. That looks a lot like poisoning. The only way to know for sure is to have them tested, but an obvious sign of poisoning is all of the die bees have their tongues sticking out. Late season swarms are usual cause by there being a problem in the hive. It could be that top half had an illness or poison in it so they where trying to leave. Late in the season bees have little to no desire to swarm, and the replacement cells were killed off by the queen, so whatever agitation that caused them to want to make a new queen and split was gone after you split them. As others have said it could have been robbing, but you have other weaker hives in the yard, and a hive that size should have easily been able to defend itself with those two small entrances. In my yard I have bees with three seams of bees guarding and fending off hives that are three ten frame deeps. Where I am at the season is coming to a close, and within the next month my bees will stop flying for the most part. If you are looking at a similar time frame I would recommend feeding your bee to help prevent robbing and bulk them up for winter. Cheers.
Well that sucks, sorry. I agree with the other comments it's a rob out. There was "probably" a bee war (though see #4)and it was all likely done and over in two hours or so.
I think these were the issues:
1. Too much space for a queenless colony/late split.
2. You put the new empty in between the lower brood chamber and the upper filled deep.
3. Combined with problem 2, you had a lower and an upper entrance and the upper was right into the honey stores. This encouraged robbers by signaling the hive was weak in population but had a lot of honey.
4. It was likely robbed out by the original Balboa hive....I'd imagine you had field bees in that split that returned to the original hive and signaled where their stores went. The first robbing was probably accepted by the split bees because it was their former colony mates covered with their old queen scent and they were likely "granted access". At some point the split colony probably either decided to fight or the other alternative is that they just starved after being robbed out. It's possible there was not a robbing war and maybe that's why you never noticed a robbing war but just minor robbing signs.
I'm sorry, I feel like I let you down by not pointing out the potential problem. It crossed my mind at the time I saw you put that empty in the middle with a top entrance. I thought it was just me being paranoid and that you probably had enough population with the capped brood you put in there. This is where we both learned a lesson. I also encountered the scenario I mentioned in #4 last year. I made a split and sat the box in the same apiary and the original hive started robbing the split. I caught it in time and moved the nuc split a half mile away and it fixed it. I split that colony again this summer and they are doing fine.
I had a pretty strong 4 frame nuc split get robbed out two weeks ago and it was queen right. Robbers can be stupid aggressive in the late and early season. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, avoiding setting up a situation like that is the best way to avoid it but sometimes we push the limits of what's "proper" and we learn a lesson that readjusts what we see as acceptable risks. It happens....easy come, easy go....learn from it and make it up next season. Don't let it overshadow your tremendous successes this year.
Brent
Don't you beat yourself up either. I think we were all so excited about Frankenuc drama hive working out, no one really looked that hard at the Balboa split. Its not what we were all focused on. And only an experienced beekeeper would have seen the potential danger, and this is not something Jim had seen before. We all were so happy at the way things were working out, we missed the snake in the grass.
I'm with Brent. I had a hive destroyed in 2 days by robbing I created. Nothing of this sort but the results are the same. It's amazing how quickly a mediocre hive can be overwhelmed by the robbing masses.
@Ronald Vanduyse Youre missing out. I wish all beekeeping videos had comments like Brents.
Ronald Vanduyse Ha, you should have had to try to type it!!!!!
A educated and very nice guy rare in RUclips shows what kind of connection this channel brings
All of them on the bottom just broke my heart :(
I would say that the hive go to hot
Ik its sad. Poor bees
I think the important lesson to learn from this is, If Vino trims his beard he loses bees. The beard is a good luck charm. Like Samson's hair.
You think its a coincidence bees "beard out" on a hive or swarm and beard. Its because the beard is a secret.
With trimming it you reduced your bee powers. Fix immediately before next spring.
No guesses, no advice, can only offer offer support and condolences to you Jim. Very, very sad situation.
Sorry for your loss.
Just a guess: they got attacked and robbed out. Not being queen right and losing foragers that returned to balboa lower they just couldn’t fend it off.
Don’t kick yourself, sometimes hives just don’t make it. If you didn’t split them Balboa might have left in a swarm.
This is making the most sense to me. I did notice the population was smaller after the first week with some of the bees going back to Balboa Lower. The remaining bees were young bees and hatching brood. Add in a super full of honey and they were defenseless. Ugh! Beekeeper fail.
i agree with this comment.
Beekeeping is a lot like Las Vegas. We take risks and gamble. Sometimes it pays off and sometimes it don't. If you win you win big. Losses are easily replaced in general.
You don't do a split in September. If you thought they were going to swarm, (they wouldn't have this late) you check for swarm cells. No swarm cells they won't swarm!
You need to do some reading, totally avoidable!
@Plum Wickit STFU
This is a hell of a title to wake up to! I’ll need a lot more coffee before I dive into this 8 minuets of despair.
Travis Phelan so sad. I’m needing another cup of coffee myself.
I hope my videos are not that difficult to digest... ha ha.
I know nothing about bees and i am not going to act like i do.I just love watching the videos you made and watching you progress from a small farm last year to what you have now, i am sorry for what happened and i hope you learn from the mistakes made and grow!
Hive robbed out! Seen the exact thing five days ago in one of my weaker hives. Went through brood box and before I knew it the air filled with bees from other hives in a feeding frenzy so I closed up hive. The entrance was cut down to the smallest opening on the restrictor.
Returned few hours later to find many bees still looking for entrance into the hive. Moved hive to another yard and the next day, upon opening, found bottom board covered as yours in dead bees. So many the small opening was blocked from the inside. I had no upper entrance, thankfully.
This time of year we must be extremely careful when opening hives as well as restricting access to the weaker hives.
My bottom board look just like yours and I know mine was robbed, for I watched the whole process. Must of been a major battle in the box with losses on both sides.
Had the same thing happen to me this year. Split my hive from last year, (year 1) and made 3 in early May. All were doing great and one just all died in late Nov. It was the middle strength wise. The weakest one is still ok.... Breaks your heart... Praying at least one makes it through... Like you , we are having a mild winter so far. Happy New Year.
Wow sorry to hear this. I feel your pain. The main thing is you learned from it and by far your end results are paying off.
I watched my neighbors hive get robbed by his second hive. I told him what was going on and he basically ignore me. A couple weeks later he had lost the hive. I since then helped him and hopefully he learns from his mistakes. He is back up to 2 hives again.
Sorry to hear that. I’m always impressed how sensitive beekeepers are to their their bees and respect for the creatures.
Just when we thought everything was calming down, CSI:Beeyard is met with another strange case.
I agree with most of the other comments. A classic case of "storage wars" honey bee style. the volume of dead bees looks like 1/2 the number of bees you would find in a healthy hive. It sucks, but it's a learning experience for all of us. thanks for sharing. ...my condolences!
You split the hive to keep them from swarming, if I'm remembering correctly, yes? As you found with the swarm that happened with the other hive, you aren't always lucky enough to find or catch the swarm, so while losing half the hive from doing the split sucks, at least you avoided Balboa swarming and leaving behind a queen cell/queen that might still have not managed to flourish and ended up losing both Balboa, and the half of the hive left behind.
Good point.
I just started my first hive. They where under my house and I took them out and put in a hive. Do you have any suggestions for a newbie.
Sorry to hear about this. :( How did you make out with your apples this year? My one producing apple tree died. I got about a bushel of apples and the rest fell off and the tree lost all of it's leaves. I will have to start with a new one next year. Sorry not on topic here.
Hi Marc, The surround seemed to work for a while, but we had a week of rain right at the tail end of curculio season and they attacked everything. It was a rainy summer and we had black fungus problems I had never had before. Then, heavy deer pressure and for the first time ever... PORCUPINES. Unbelievable. Porcupines climbing the trees ripping off branches. It was nuts. A few of our trees were totally stripped. We harvested zero apples. We're now re-thinking what the hell we're doing with apples. If we want to be serious, we need serious fencing and a serious spray regimen. Luckily, it was a great year for bees and blueberries!
Vino Farm Good grief, it's always something with fruit trees. Don't give up yet though! The deer and porcupines could be a real challenge though. On the surround, Just hope for a drier season next year. We had the same problem down here, RAIN RAIN and more RAIN. It just won't stop! I told my wife it will stop raining this year when it starts to snow. :( It was a no win situation on the entire east coast with surround. Our blueberries were very good too, but we didn't harvest any for storage because the freaking birds got most of them. The couple of handfuls I did eat were plump and delicious - super sweet and flavorful.
MarcsAdventures We have 75 blueberry bushes. We generally harvest and freeze until the chest freezer fills up and let the birds take the rest. This year we filled up the freezer in about 3 weeks and we weren't even half way through harvesting what was out there. The birds got fat this summer! I really want to solve the apple problems, but like grapes, I'm realizing organic solutions are really challenging. Bees are top priority right now, so whatever we spray needs to be bee safe.
Experienced beekeeper here.
You split the hive and the queenless unit is demoralized because it has no laying queen.
So it was unable to resist robbing pressure then the unit starved to death.
Yes. This seems to be exactly what happened. My mistake. A lesson learned that won’t be repeated. Thanks for your comment.
Improper split, Taft was the cause
As stated above, the field bees from Balboa would return to their original colony (plus any younger bees already oriented to Balboa), leaving a reduced population in the split. The bees that did stay with the split had to protect and maintain a large area with that box in the middle...that's huge stress on them the way you put empty boxes, especially foundation in between like that. Maybe OK in summer with big population. Also putting empty and plain foundation frames in between the brood is stressful as well. So a young, demoralized, reduced population of bees trying to protect what they've got = robbing war or peaceful theft by known sister bees. Sad situation, sympathies. Ideally trying to do a split like that and have it requeen itself, the split would have to be moved several miles away to avoid field bees returning to original colony (with a drone congregation area close enough for the new queen to mate).
Another consideration in letting bees raise a queen from brood is that it may result in an inferior queen. They'll build emergency queen cells over larvae and the oldest larva they choose will be the first queen to emerge to kill the others. Ideally you want a very young larva fed royal jelly from as early as possible to get the best quality queen, not one that was fed worker food for a bit. Oops, kind of late, just looked at dates.
Wow, that’s nuts. Sorry for the loss of the hive.
Hi Jim, I sorry to see your video. The same thing happened to me about a month ago. I live near Boston. The hive was doing well - about 7-8 frames full from a nuc obtained a month previously. They seemed slow-moving so I had a look and there was a ton of bees dead and dying on the bottom board just like you showed. No sign of varroa on the screen board at all. I suspect perhaps pesticide poisoning. There was about 2 frames of bees (incl the queen) left. I fed them fresh syrup and a pollen patty and they perked up but never grew so I added those bees to my other hive (newspaper method and killed queen). A mystery.
Sorry about the lost hive. That has got to be frustrating.
I have a question for ya though..... why save/ reuse components of the dead hive? Especially when you don’t know what happened.
It was a little risky and I will know when I check Balboa this weekend after those frames have been in there for a week. My gut told me it was most likely a robbing scenario and NOT disease... I'll see soon enough. If I was wrong, I will learn my lesson.
I have a question, what does putting the brood frames in the freezer exactly do?
It kills the capped brood in a relatively clean and humane way. The frames are then put back into the hive and the bees will completely clean out the cells. If you leave dead brood out too long, it goes rotten and wrecks the wax.
I think they got robbed and then starved.
I read the comments and some one said (too much room) they could not stay warm. My question to this is how does a hive in a tree stay warm when there is no way to shrink the cavity.
I am still having problems understanding why we shrink our hives down in winter then add more room in the spring . I under stand if you have 2 supers of honey and remove one the bees could not build up an empty box so no replacement but I see and hear people reducing the hive size in fall "because the bees can not stay warm in a big hive and will freeze" when wild bees do just fine with all the (extra) room they have especially if they are in a wall cavity of an unheated garage.
Thanks for any responces.
I'll be doing my condensing this weekend. I'll try to explain my thoughts about that in an upcoming video.
Vino Farm thank you
A 3 to 4 inch insulation of wood is way better than a 3/4 inch thickness of a box. Wild bees are still reducing the entrance of a tree trump. Wild bees maximize the amount of bees in the tree hive before they run out of room and they split up.
Mankind is splitting bees so they space may be indeed to big for them to function properly. Mankind also takes honey so the space is even bigger after honey harvest.
HI man. sorry to hear that. What did you use to stain the hive with? Could it have been toxic to them?Just a thought.
Same treatment on all hives. This was the only one with trouble. It was most likely robbing of the weak queenless hive.
I wasn't expecting to feel as upset as I am about a hive collapse. I'm sorry that it happened and I hope all the other hives continue to be strong T-T
Robbed out. Bees are ruthless little critters this time of year. Too much space to defend.
That title scared the crap out of me.... My poor little heart. I thought the "ALL" in that title meant more than 1 colony. Sad to see this split not survive and will be interested to read what other bee keepers in your comment section have to say as i'm sure some will have useful insight to share. As sad as it is i'm glad it is just the one hive.
You probably constricted the air flow too much and they overheated.
@Poison Ivy If they had an upper entrance would they not simply leave out the top and beard if too hot?
have you done treatment for varroa mites the past few days?
No. This turned out to be a robbing situation.
I know I'm two years too late, and I apologize if this has already been stated. I just took a course in beekeeping and one of the segments was what to look for with diseases and causes of hive failures, and this looks exactly like pesticide/ herbicide contamination example. Bees groom each other and touch each other, etc and when they fly through a chemical, they can bring it back to the hive and contaminate each other. We even have a website in our state that we can sign up for so that farmers (voluntarily) will notify beekeepers of when they're going to spray so that they can keep their girls looked up. Here, one of the problems is the wineries.
Your channel is great, by the way.
So sorry. We have lost hives before also. Some to swarms but a one like you describe and we have never figured it out.
I’m sorry this happened. I like the care you give your bees.
i was amazed this fall when i added a wet box and made a tiny bee war, there were many dead when i opened the hive the next time. if it was weak and the powerfull hives came for them , it could all end very fast for them. In my case it was a powerfull hive and the wet box was actually above the other top board so i think thats why they managed to defend. Sorry to hear about this Jim.
A sudden bunch of dead bees is quite suspicious. In Georgia, we have a process at the Department of Agriculture to report sudden colony death. They even send a state inspector to collect sample and identify if a product or pesticide could have been sprayed on something the foragers have visited.
I would suggest you contact the equivalent department in Massachusetts to see if a similar process exists.
I just want to offer some hugs.
Appreciated.... Oh, did you mean to the bees?
Vino Farm you deserve hugs. The bees have pheromones, we have hugs.
lol... i offer nothing...
@How Not To I got you with hugs. Also if you ever need any support come over to Twitter. Same handle @JustWinks
@How Not To we have a very large group of chronic pain patients. But all are welcome
We had the exact same thing happen to our hive last year almost to the day. Definitely not robbing as we had a full deep packed with honey. We had a strong, healthy queen and varroa count was very low. We had a rainy week and when we went back in, they were all dead. Just as you showed. We live in the PNW so damp winters are a challenge. I figured maybe it was too much humidity (even though we had taken all the precautions, but now I wonder....
Sad, glad your insulated hives are doing great. I am finishing a build using your concept
Hi, So sorry about your hive collapse. Did you check for foul brood?
Not foul brood. There was still brood emerging in places. That was sad to see.
Sorry for your loss. I hope you find out what happened.
Here is a tip: remove those mite boards for better venting during those hot months. I still have mine off from June.
They were off all summer. We're starting to get nights in the 40sF. So they're back on now.
Jim, we often look for another reason than ourselves as to why something bad happens to our hives. I've watched your temperatures every day and when you made the split, the nighttime temps were in the 50's, you're right, not freezing, but to bees, anything under 95 degrees is cool to cold. The brood need the warm temps to mature in a timely manner. So.. they vibrate to keep themselves and the ball warm, also warming the surrounding food stores. Having that empty super in the middle isn't like having a shelf in the house where when you want a can of peaches, you walk over and get them. The bee ball moves in whole up and down and around the hive. The outside workers, nurses, pass food from one to another through their begging action. It's the nature of things. Putting the empty box in the way of the stores basically left it invisible to the main chamber. They shook or vibrated themselves to death. Simple as that. Today, your warmest temp is 67, night will be 43. Think of these tiny beings having to make up 50 degrees of difference. Quite the task ahead. It's your 3rd year. I wanted to see you take honey this year, let them replace with feeding before winter. In this case, I'd worry on that, but I'd suggest heavy feeding now. They need the glucose, pollen patties will help. And don't let them run dry. The next 10 days at your place is not good bee weather, feed them from the inside. Have fun. See you on the next video. You might find this paper of interest. Smiles to you and your's. bit.ly/2zF40zf
What an amazing comment. Well reasoned out with referenced material provided.
the hives are simple to much for winter and the brood in the bottom?...not a good architecture idea...I always keep my bees squized in a 10 frame box to get the winter...Your comment in spot on.
Jim, I agree that the most likely cause is robbing. I have had 1000's of dead bees in and under a hive from a single event. As another poster suggested, Balboa lower half is probably heavy with stores now. I highly recommend the use of robber screens when making splits, especially anytime after June. No problem with new queens finding their way back in either, which is a common misconception. So sorry for you and the hive that fought to the death.
Hi there, sorry about your bees, that is very unfortunate and very sad. Don't be too disheartened, I hope that you will continued to build. Blessings!!!
Very sad to hear that. I can tell you by my own experience that I don’t split hives pass end of June. There isn’t a lot of food and a new queen (not matted) always has a risk of failing. Good luck. Is starting to get cold here 🇨🇦
I wanted to cry when I saw what happened to your babies. I am so sorry.
Oh no! Just last night I put an empty shallow box on top of the brood box and put the honey super on the top of the empty shallow, hoping to give room for the queen to lay. Should I just remove the shallow box?
Edward Coffin
The empty shallow box was for the queen? Not for honey? Is this in an apiary with other hives near it? Is the brood box super full of bees?
Is the honey super full? Or mostly full?
If all the above is a yes, I would be scared to repeat what may have happened here. I don't know if putting a second brood box on (perhaps under the first?) is a good idea for your area - weather and other bees are important factors. Give more information, perhaps one of the beekeepers can answer better.
I’m sorry about your hive. Thank you for sharing and helping us new beeks learn. Between your awesome videos and the comments, I have learned so much about bees and my own beekeeping instincts. Every day is a new adventure.
I make a lot of mistakes. They're not usually catastrophic and I do get very lucky... but whenever I can share knowledge, it feels good. Thanks for watching.
Queen War's with the Smell of others :-) Getting close to Fall there. No Drones to meet a Queen. In October until Spring. Making a Fall Split is hard. I left mine alone 2 Months ago here in Central Cali. They are doing well until Jan Feb here. Then it is time to Split before Swarming. Bee Pro Active.
Damn it I almost cried. Why am I so invested in these damn bees...
Dang sorry for your loss. Not as bad as end of winter after your first year but man sad to see all your bees like that from that hive.
Sad to see this. Sorry for your loss. Very strange.
could you check if there was a pesticide application in the area and if you fed your hive with some syrup that had some varroa treatment ?
The majority of comments vote on a robbing. I guess that makes sense just because of the quickness of it. I still wouldn't give those boxes to other bees without scorching them first, just to be sure. I do think you do great work though. Keep it up.
I am so sorry , Brent, it's so sad!!
I was wondering, If those small openings were covered by other bees from the outside before they took the honey, would that cause them to suffocate? OOoooooh, that bothers me!!!!! Can a hive be that vulnerable? I was thinking of starting bees this summer, I better re-think this through. WOW!!! It seems like they were trapped in the hive. What can be done to protect the bees from being trapped in like that?
Brent, I'm really sorry about what happed to your beautiful honey-bees
Thanks for the content. There is a ton of basic beekeeping videos but fewer
good beekeepers making the judgement calls. This one didn't work but your
comment section is worth reading.
The gold is in the comments. Has been since I started!
Was hive smelling bad? Could be foul brood infection?
So sorry! Personally, i would never reuse equipment from an unknown death or sickness situation. Set it asside, let it freeze over winter.
Were there piles of dead outside the entrance?
No, they were 99% inside the hive. I had a gut feeling it was a robbing scenario. I'll know if there was a problem with the frames when I open up Balboa next. Thanks.
The same thing happened to my hive, I don't understand what happened either. Feeling a little better now that I see it didn't happen to us only.
Don't feel bad. I lost all 40 hives in my bee yard in a matter of 3 weeks..And they were fed and all treated for mites regularly. I don't get it Prolly friggen chem trail poisoning.
Oh no. 40 colonies? Where are you?
@@vinofarm Crestview, Florida
@@vinofarm I'm going to switch to a Fomic acid mite treatment this year to in case it was mites that killed them. Since fomic acid kills mites in the brood cell.
It was a rob out, and then a starve out. This time of year they should be gaining weight for winter. This is a clear sign of a weak flow and hungry bees taking advantage of a hive that was split up and given too much space to occupy. There shouldn't be a super in between this time of year and they should be reduced to one entrance maybe 3-4 inches based on the hives strength.
I recommend removing your supers and leaving what you want to have over winter very soon. Time is running out for feeding them up and them being able to cure the feed for winter. If you have a super full for each hive thats perfect.
This was the best comment at this point. Im not sure how soon temperatures starp dropping towards winter at Your apiary, Jim, but bees should be stimulated to build up brood with light syrup and then fed heavy syrup to be packed by summer bees, so that wintering bees are not exhausted before 'their season'.
Aww that sucks, I was sad when I saw the title when I woke up. Well hopefully the rest of the fall goes smoothly for you.
Thank you, Vino-Farm Master, I learned after split, check out box everyday. (3-4 times a day, too)
That stinks! I agree with those that have already said it was a robbing incident and ensuing battle, and unfortunately they came out on the wrong side at the end. Very sorry this happened to you, don't let it get you down, learn from it and move on!
Thanks!
Another question Jim, did you find bee bodies outside the hive on the ground - when last you were in the hive?
There were a few, but not piles. 99% were on the bottom board. Probably because the reducer blocked them in.
Please accept my condolences and sympathy.
I had the same thing happen. I did a full box split and didn't look for the queen. Two days later it was dead just like yours. When I pulled the box off the bottom board the dead bees litteraly spilled over the edges of the bottom board. Sometimes if you look at the frames that had stores in them the wax will be chewed way back, sometimes almost to the midrib, where the robbers wanted every drop of honey.
Robbed, then starved is my vote.
When it gets cold isn’t it true that they only need 1 box to keep warm?
Anymore than one is to much area from them to heat.
I’m new to all this, but my question is this, when winter starts to show its ugly face , isn’t that the time to start reducing everything back to one hive?
Every beekeeper has different opinions. I like 8 frame boxes with two levels (either two deeps or one deep + one medium). I have 11 of 12 hives alive at this moment... The one that died? It was in a single deep box. All my two-high hives are alive.
It happens ,good thing is you definitely have resources to start over , we didn't split last season like we could've, ready this year.
One of my five hives died this week and it looks just like this. It was a packed single deep 7-frame (I make my own). About a month ago it was raining all the time and the hive had a huge beard on it, so I gave them a medium super for more room but didn't inspect the hive. I think they might have raised some queen cells and swarmed, somehow failed with the new queen, and then succumbed to some disease due to being stressed and then got robbed out.
You can't expect that boxes and frames can be in use for years without accumulating increasing amounts of mold spores, bacteria, pesticide residues and other things harmful to the bees.
I think beekeepers need to start using sanitizing practices of regularly rotating and cleaning boxes and frames, as well as limiting the swapping of frames and boxes directly from one hive to another whenever possible. Hand and tool cleaning between hives is another basic procedure to consider.
Have spare 'sanitized' components available for routine hive modifications. Of course cleaning should be as harmless to bees as possible, steam cleaning, hydrogen peroxide, ozone, UV, sunlight, and perhaps very safe soaps. etc. Good luck. b.
These frames are brand new. Drawn out within the last couple months. I agree with you, though.
Actually nature itself is utilizing cleaning practices, but beekeepers will not allow it. For example....wax-moth will destroy/eat wax combs and other bugs like roaches etc. will clean the mess up with bacteria to take care of the rest. It is a natural way in nature to to take care of old combs and for bees having to make new combs. and to interrupt diseases.
So sorry to see this, I hope you discover the cause so it does not happen again!
My Bee Soap doesn't let me down! ALL the same drama as any day time drama. Love, war, crime,....death.... I'm so sorry you lost that hive. That is never an easy experience. I hope you and your fellow bee keepers can figure out what happened. I'm on the edge of my seat as I anxiously await the next video. I need to know that you can prevent this from happening in the future!
Definitely an acute event, probably robbing since the other hives are fine and the entrance was wide open. I do have to say I think you should be reducing your hives' volume, not adding boxes at this point. The flow is over and it is time to condense them to get organized for winter. Love you videos, thanks for sharing!
Yes, thanks. The expansion and split happened 3 weeks ago in the first week of September. I'm condensing and feeding starting this weekend.
Jim, I bet all there food was gone. This is what happens when you spread the recourses to thin late in the season, Im not criticizing, It happened to me once too. Start feeding anything that has a lot of unhatched brood or they will eat all the food when they hatch. They are growing girls. Lots of brood requires lots of food. Also they need good winter stores. Its do or die time. I wish you the best. I feel your pain! Pollen patties and syrup until it gets to cold for them to take. Good luck!!
Man thats horrible, my first hive of Italians went that route and I couldnt sleep for 3 days, totally ate me up because it was totally all my fault. Carry on, we're up against alot as it is, I love your insights and exploration!
Thank you for sharing this will help all beekeepers learn. I’m sorry about your hive. My two cents on this: too much space for a queenless colony and probably robbed out by the original Balboa hive.
Don't add a box as they cant draw it out this time of year, they won't be able to keep warm with that extra room, and you might start a robbing situation again on balboa.
Hornets and wasps can fly and rob. Building up a box should not be the priority, shrinking down and consolidating recources should. I've had this exact situation happen to me last year. They died at the entrance defending all that space.
PJ Mac yes!
No swarm cells present - they won't swarm - simple as that, rookie mistake totally avoidable with a little reading.
Ah but there WERE swarm cells present. Before they died. Its why he split them off to stop the swarm.
Julie Enslow that late in the season I highly doubt swarm cells were present. Even if there were swarm cells, probably old empty swarm cells, that late in the season you crush the swarm cells, those queens wont be able to mate anyway no drone congregation area that late. Reading and experience and find a good mentor.
Check the previous video, its the reason for the split. They were there.
awww. poorJim. Don't bee-t yourself up about it. On the bright side, you have other colonies that are still healthy and strong.
Sad, but a learning experience. And if it was robbing, at least the honey went to the other hives.
Send samples to the lab it's free and your know what happen
They do not analyze samples (bees, wax comb, pollen, etc.) for the presence of viruses or pesticide residue.
Also the results are getting send to the sender of the sample and to the local inspector.
Did it get hot down there? Maybe they over heated due to lack of up flow of air.
I’m not a beekeeper but here’s my opinion. What changed?, the reducer. Also, all the honey was gone. Maybe they got trapped because the reducer was too sudden and drastic, then they consumed all their stores, then starved out. Seems weird that all this could happen in five days, but it’s still warm and their metabolism is still high.
So, so sorry to hear this! I have no advice to give about what might have gone wrong, but it looks like others have some great points. My only advice is this: If you have a dog, make sure to dispose of those bees someplace where the dog cannot find them. I had a hive die in the middle of last winter and I just dumped the bees out on the ground thinking I would clean up the area when we had a thaw. Well, we had the thaw, but I didn't get to the dead bees before my dog did. Apparently, dead, rotting bees are delicious. Who knew? Unfortunately he was seriously ill for about 48 hours after. Dead bees coming out of both ends! He's OK now, but man, you do not want to have to clean up that mess!
I'm so sorry Jim, that was very heartbreaking 😔. I'm glad that the balboa it's okey. Best of lucks, and just quip learning.
Thank you.
Our condolences on your hive loss.
I am so sorry to hear of your colony tragedy. The same thing happened to me as I witnessed it happening 4 hours after my morning walk about to check the colonies. Yes, it is robbing. You can tell by the shredded comb cells. The invading robbers kill the queen first. I found the queen on top of a frame (obviously trying to escape).The residential bees panic and all hell breaks loose after that. The resident bees can't escape either if the entrance is too small because it is jammed with robbers. So all that is left when the robbers are done, is a pile of dead and dying bees in the bottom of the hive. I also believe that because there are so many bees in the hive at once, the resident bees also die from stress and heat.
I was told that this type of robbing as well as usurpation of a hive, is usually caused by feral (Hybid Africanized) bees. One of my strong hives was USURPED as I also witnessed it happening at 10:00 A.M. during my colony check walk. The invading bees killed my queen took over the hive, then co-existed with the resident bees (they didn't kill that many oddly enough. The Italian colony just surrendered, perhaps because they knew their queen was dead). The invaders did not rob the hive at all. The queen and her invaders were definitely feral and aggressive. So I dispatched the feral queen and requeened with another sweet Italian (but had to endure the 6 weeks of aggressive ferals).
I live in San Diego, CA which is the perfect corridor for the unwelcome and hybrid Africanized bees (thanks to the experiment gone wrong in Brazil 1950's?). I also have heard that these bees are learning to adapt to cold weather as they have been seen in Northern CA.
I hope this information helps you and others.
Bummer dude! (*key thing - robbing = disease transmission)? What if there enough bees got stuck behind the entrance reducer - that no one could get out. - and they suffocated/starved, were not able to cleanse? (and they ate all the stores they had left too). You need drawn frames for the winter - no non-wax gaps in the hive. "blank frames" are not a good idea Send the bees to Beltsville!!! so someone can see what happened? Do you have yellow jackets? too... did they visit later? Might be a good time to get simple robbing screens out there? So that all stops. That's all I can think - sorry for your loss. Hang in there.
that's just sad, you work so hard with the bees. And i know you tend and take care of them. just a sad day in the bee yard. :-(
my hive died....found it to be interesting that they where face in the comb dead not all,but quite a few.. can anyone explain why.
They were fixing to swarm so you want to split it as a swarm so in retrospect you have to simulate a swarm in which is the novinoff split its is in there nature to swarm that is why the novinoff split was introduced
Dude, sorry to hear about this. I have very little experience with this, but I concur with the collective; I think they were robbed and destroyed by your other hives. This wouldn't be CCD because they would just be gone, and the lack of all honey stores shows they were completely obviously plundered. Because some bees are still alive, I am led to believe all of the bees on the bottom board were defenders that didn't survive. Again, sorry about the loss.
Thanks, man. My gut thought was robbing, right off the bat. My awesome commenters confirmed my suspicions. I'm pretty certain that was the issue. This was a teaching moment for sure.
It might be a good idea to put that hive into nuc size boxes. I agree with the other comments of it being to late for them to fill out that upper box. Sorry this happened but there's a higher likelihood of them surviving with less space to have to heat over the winter without enough resources in the deep box.
This is what happened with one of my hives 2 weeks ago. Did a split and left couple frames of bees Queen-less with honey. I was surprised how quickly robbers killed guard killed some bees and sucked out all the honey. The rest of live bees went into near by colonies.
I would suggest you start to remove boxes from all your hives as getting late in the season now and colonies will be reducing in size and dont need all the added space to keep warm.
This weekend is condensing weekend and feeding has already started on the small hives. October for us starts to have chilly nights, but there are still many more beautiful warm days ahead.
If this is the one you think threw a swarm, I’m guessing a combination of robbing and decreased bees to warm all that space is what did them in. Still, you are doing great with all your splits this year!
Part of me has this odd feeling that they teied to swarm wile being robbed. I feel it was a mix of both. The entrance got blocked from dead bees defending the hive, when everything was gone the colony tried to swarm and got trapped. It sounds weird but i just get that feeling.
Volcanic Arcanine
They had no queen, so swarming was not an option. They had a second entrance so they were never trapped.
They had a second hole to escape from so not likely from that. They can also beard if too hot, so not likely that. Too fast too sudden, either robbing or pesticide or even cold from too much real estate to cover and keep warm if it was cold. Just too sad for words with no definitive answer is brutal. Hard to learn with SO many variables.
would have been interesting to see if the frame of brood that had bees still taking care of them, would have hatched into a good hive. If there were no mites, or beetles, the worst I think would happen, would be what dead brood there was being extracted and ejected. I'm willing to bet if there were bees taking care of them, then some were still alive.
The hive was robbed out. Brood would have been fine
i think it was your reducer--the bees panic-ed-to hot still
and there need to get food for the winter they needed a bigger opening --
You are awesome don't feel bad
I had planted Buckeye seeds in my bee pasture only to find bees and Buckeyes don't mix. Mowing strip where buckeyes planted weekly.
If you don't know what it is, you don't know whether it is a disease either so I would not have put anything of that hive near another hive, until knowing what happened.
Hey, sorry to here about your hive. That looks a lot like poisoning. The only way to know for sure is to have them tested, but an obvious sign of poisoning is all of the die bees have their tongues sticking out. Late season swarms are usual cause by there being a problem in the hive. It could be that top half had an illness or poison in it so they where trying to leave. Late in the season bees have little to no desire to swarm, and the replacement cells were killed off by the queen, so whatever agitation that caused them to want to make a new queen and split was gone after you split them. As others have said it could have been robbing, but you have other weaker hives in the yard, and a hive that size should have easily been able to defend itself with those two small entrances. In my yard I have bees with three seams of bees guarding and fending off hives that are three ten frame deeps. Where I am at the season is coming to a close, and within the next month my bees will stop flying for the most part. If you are looking at a similar time frame I would recommend feeding your bee to help prevent robbing and bulk them up for winter. Cheers.