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Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers

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Chronological Thread  
  • From: Mike Johnson <mm AT reddrum.com>
  • To: Randall Austin <ra41717 AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] Bee Hive Post Mortum
  • Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2015 18:13:27 -0500

I did not know if a photo was acceptable to the list - I’ll take one and send it!

I opened the hive after I didn’t hear anything, and saw the dead bodies on the bottom.  But I put it back together because it was late in the afternoon and frankly I wouldn’t have known what to look for to determine what went wrong.  My thinking was to preserve the scene until I could learn what to look for.  I plan on bringing it in the garage in a day or two and going through it.

So… I didn’t do a lot of poking around.  I did see a golf ball sized cluster near the top outer frames and a much, much larger cluster of bees vertically through at least 3 boxes.  Think 6x6 board vertical if you will.  

Last fall I sprinkled powdered sugar over the brood box and checked the IPM board a day later.  It had less than 10/inch (6 I think) so I did not treat with anything.  At the time I didn’t realize how dangerous varroa mites were, but I recently watched some of David Tarpy’s videos and now know I need to be much more careful.  I may change to 200 bees in a jar for testing as well.  I’m hoping to be as chemical free as I can.

I did have a very increasing number of hive beetles at the end of last summer/fall.  I had beetle baffles on all of my hives and tried beetle blasters.  The blasters caught a grand total of 3 beetles.  I had 5-10 beetles on each frame when I looked at them.  I don’t think that is overload and I don’t think that would cause the hive to die in winter, however it is more information.

I read and was concerned about feeding in cold temperatures.  Can the water in the mix increase the humidity in the hives to dangerous levels?  Is getting pollen patties or making sugar candy a good way to feed too?

I’ll “weigh” the other hives and see if I can determine how much food they may have.  Rambling here, but I saw a hive scale is for sell now that transmits the weight to your phone.  That would be incredible to have to learn about flow, but it is $500/scale!

I’ll post back after the autopsy.

Thank you for your help!
(Sorry for the rambling - it’s so interesting)

mike



On Feb 17, 2015, at 6:20 PM, Randall Austin <ra41717 AT gmail.com> wrote:

Hey Mike,

A picture would be helpful (e.g. cell phone pic).

I assume with all the dead bees inside the hive that there are also lots of dead bees head-first in the combs with their butts sticking out. This is the sign of starvation. There may be lots of honey in the hive but it if is out of reach of the cluster it may as well be miles away. This can be due to bad luck, not enough honey, too much space, very disorganized space, or a cluster too small to span across an area that spans honey.

A small cluster often is due to varroa mite pressure (the viruses spread by mites weaken and kill bees). What did you use to treat for varroa last fall?

Lift your other 2 hives from the back to see how heavy they are. You should do this often throughout the winter. If they are light (easy to lift), feed sugar syrup ASAP in a top feeder or division board feeder (any sort of feeder that feeds inside the hive or right above the cluster). Baggie feeders are handy in an emergency -- fill a gallon baggie with sugar syrup, lay it on the inner cover or directly on the top bars and slice a couple of slits in the top surface. Put an empty super over the baggie and the outer cover over that.

Note that cold weather does not kill bees. They thrive in winters extremely colder and longer than ours. Trapped moisture from a hive that is too tight will kill winter bees, so insulating hives is both unnecessary and potentially harmful. But it doesn't sound like that was your issue at all, so don't worry about that.

Two articles that discuss overwintering tips in our area are <here> and <here>.

Randall

On 2/17/2015 3:32 PM, Mike Johnson wrote:
FCCD9028-C01D-489F-94CF-6358D58B7E69 AT reddrum.com" type="cite" class="">
I went out today to do an ear test to check on my three hives.  Putting my ear against the wood I heard bees in two of the three hives, but nothing in what I thought was my best hive.  I pulled the bottom IPM board out and saw thousands of dead bees.  Then I took off the top and found tens of thousands of dead bees clustered down the middle of the hive.  Sad…

1.  How can I determine what happened to them?
2.  Since one of the three hives died and they are all managed the same should I do anything different on the other two hives to help them get through the next few days?

All hives are 8 frame with the IPM board in, inner top cover with the oval slot, garden hive top.  No insulation of any type around them.  The dead hive was the largest with one deep and three mediums.  The other two hives are a deep and two mediums.  I had taken a medium off the top of them last fall because they were mostly empty.  I took three quarts of honey total across all the hives last year.  In the fall I fed all the hives.

I’d like to learn what went wrong for the future as well as to, hopefully, keep the other two hives alive.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts.

mike

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