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Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers

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  • From: Rachel Watersong <rachelwatersong AT fastmail.com>
  • To: ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [ocba] Learning from hive failure
  • Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2016 16:12:46 -0400

Hi beekeepers,

I'm a first-year beekeeper, and one of my 2 hives just bit the dust. I
went to inspect them and the hive has absolutely no bees, brood, honey,
etc-- pretty much all just empty comb with plenty of shb larvae through
it (though I think the hive died at least a week ago, so the shb could
be just now getting going??). No big gobs of adult hive beetles, or
really hardly any adult hive beetles that I see. No evidence of AFB or
chalkbrood. There are some bee exoskeletons, some inside comb and some
littered on the screened bottom board. And on the cement blocks under
the bottom board there is some stuff that looks sort of like rich brown
sawdust, but each piece is a little brown string. ????

Possible hypotheses:
--Could small hive beetles have killed the hive?
--Could they have starved? Both my colonies have been very weak in honey
stores all year (started late May with nucs) despite continuously sugar
feeding them.
--Could they have been robbed out by my other hive? The hive that died
was stronger at the beginning of summer, so I had them with no entrance
reducer while I had an entrance reducer on my (now alive) hive.

My living hive is looking OK, though still with not much in the way of
honey stores or eggs/larvae but a fair amount of capped brood and LOTS
of bees.

One other random tidbit-- I have observed some bees in the living hive
doing a weird thing where one bee appears to be pulling the wings off
another bee, then the wingless bee just drops off onto the ground. I saw
this today when I inspected the good hive (the two bees were both inside
when I lifted the top box).

Any insight would be greatly appreciated for this total novice!

--Rachel Watersong

--
Rachel Watersong
rachelwatersong AT fastmail.com

***I've been moving towards checking my email less frequently, to help
me feel more alive and engaged in my everyday life. So if I don't
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