Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

ocba - Re: [ocba] Weather and the bees

ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Randall Austin <ra41717 AT gmail.com>
  • To: Marci Ryan <marciryan AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: "ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org" <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] Weather and the bees
  • Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2011 19:42:59 -0400

Marci,

"Absconding" --- where the bees all pick up and leave --- is a possibility with any hive, although fortunately it doesn't happen very often with our European bees. With a brand new package, the risk is higher because the bees haven't set up housekeeping yet, so they aren't leaving anything valuable behind. A way to increase the chances a package will stay put is to give it a frame of open brood. They are much less likely to abandon a hive with larvae that need care. But when you are starting from scratch with your very first package, you obviously can't do that. You probably did everything you are expected to do in your situation.
You'll have to ask your bees why they decided to leave. They may have just found a "better" home somewhere else. I haven't heard of storms triggering absconding, but bees will sometimes abscond due to stress. Maybe the change in atmospheric pressure from all the tornadoes did have something to do with it; what we don't know is a lot more than what we do know about bees.
Whatever the actual cause, I think in your case it was just plain bad luck!

Randall Austin

On 4/17/2011 2:17 PM, Marci Ryan wrote:
Hi all,
We are new beekeepers and left our newly installed 3 lb package with
queen for the week. We fed them, and in my one inspection, they seemed
fine. We just got news from our bee-sitter that there was no activity
in the hive flowing yesterday's storms. They seem to have disappeared.
Is this common when tornados are around? Did we have bad luck or is
there something in our mismanagement? Thanks for your ideas, and I'd
love to be on the list for capturing a swarm!

Cheers,
Marci

Sent from my iPhone
_______________________________________________
ocba mailing list
North Carolina Beekeeping
http://www.theocba.org/






Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page