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  • From: Randall Austin <ra41717 AT gmail.com>
  • To: "david AT daviddg.com" <david AT daviddg.com>, Orange County Bees <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] no foragers
  • Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2017 14:03:23 -0400

David,

I don't have a firm answer for you but I have some musings.

  1. For an established colony, about a fifth to a quarter of the worker bees will be foragers. They forage the last one to two weeks of their lives.
  2. After moving the split, the bees that were already foragers can be expected to return to the old location.
  3. So, in the split, there can be two types of foragers: 1) the bees that have "aged into" the job after making the split (roughly 1/30th of the existing worker bees per day); 2) bees that become precocious foragers (ahead of schedule) because of pressing need in the colony.
  4. You don't say how many frames were in the split. But if there weren't a whole lot of bees and you gave them abundant nectar/honey/pollen, it doesn't seem that there would be a huge need to force house bees into becoming precocious foragers. Similarly, if there weren't a whole lot of worker bees, even a normal fifth of them wouldn't amount to a huge number of foragers.
  5. In addition, most of the past week has been rainy, preventing foraging by any self-respecting bee. Now that the rain has stopped, will all the pent-up foraging-age bees begin at once? Maybe their orientation flights will take place this afternoon.

So... IF the split is very well provisioned, I wouldn't worry one bit about not seeing much foraging activity this soon after making the split. My guess is that it will rapidly pick up the rest of this week.

This is all just philosophizing. Maybe a raccoon got in and ate them all... but I'm guessing you would have mentioned that! :-)

Randall


On 4/26/2017 11:05 AM, david AT daviddg.com wrote:
A18CB7B4-4F30-4ECC-8DFA-C8698B6FD04B AT daviddg.com">
I have a question regarding splits:

A week ago I split one colony. I moved one spit hive with the original queen--plus eggs through capped brood, nectar and pollen--about 6 feet from their original position. I also shook in a frames worth of nurse bees. 

I added a new queen to the split colony in the original location (where all the foragers are still returning to).

Thus far there are no foragers flying in and out of the hive which I moved. Should I be seeing some forager activity by now—one week after the split?

Thanks in advance for any feedback. 

----------------------
David DiGiuseppe
919-968-9600
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