What your experiencing there now is normal in bee behavior. When all is going well and there is good foraging about and the bees are busy then the hive can be a delight to work. When a colony is consuming more stores than are available to forage on then the bees are under stress. I believe that bees are a lot more aware of their circumstance than a lot of bee keepers accept.
While you can have a hive that is permanently angry that is one thing but for a hive that is calm normally then quickly changes to be on the ‘hot’ side a good bee keeper will consider why that is happening and not just puff more smoke on the bees and ignore the reason for the change.
Nice to read an update from you.
Cheers
Thank you Peter for the insight, do you recommend feeding them syrop to compensate the lack of nectar which may be the cause of their agitation ?
What I do is not feed till the bees have consumed all the uncapped and are consuming capped honey then I will feed syrup in a top box if there is nothing coming into the hive. It is a personal judgement about feeding and when to begin.
I’m very lucky that there is normally a good flow of nectar and pollen and it was only with last years drought that I did have to feed all of my hives, but I’m not adverse to feeding a nuc or a weaker hive.
In my apiary if all the hives are on the angry side suddenly then my thinking is towards a weather situation like a thunderstorm which the bees can sense hours before I see and hear it. Or a reduction in foraging. If it is just one hive then I’m happy to do an inspection outside of my sequence of time to see if anything is going pear shaped in that hive.
I don’t know if you know the term ‘a gut feeling’ but if you know it and I get a gut feeling about a particular hive that something isn’t right then my gut feeling is usually right. One of the first things I check on is the stores in the hive.
Cheers
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Peter I wonder if this is right for beeks helping their colonies head into cold winter. I’m thinking you might be doing this in your area, so as not to mingle syrup with nectar in uncapped cells. But in climates with a cold winter, we leave all stores in the typically larger brood areas so it wouldn’t make a difference if some cells contained syrup too. I’m interested to hear your thoughts.
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Hello, I agree with Eva, there’s only the brood box in both of my hives and winter is coming soon, so I wouldn’t mind feeding them a little bit of syrup. However today they were calm. I’ll have to inspect the hives and check for the honey reserves.
Is feeding the bees in autumn a standard thing or does it depend on their capped honey storage ?
Random question : does everyone develop swelling/scratching/redness after a bee sting or some people are just fine after a bee sting ?
It depends on their stores and your climate/natural forage, but I often need to feed (3 seasons out of 4).
Not everyone, but most people have some reaction to bee stings. I have a considerable reaction, but I am not allergic. My husband sometimes has no reaction, and sometimes a big response. It partly depends on the site of the sting. Facial stings tend to swell more. One on the leg may not swell as much.
The way we deal with it is to pull out the stinger ASAP (less than a minute is ideal). Then we apply a BiteAway heat treatment which if done within minutes of the sting, stops a lot of the lasting discomfort. Here is the device (no, I don’t work for them!) -
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I can attest to Bite Away’s effectiveness - I too will usually swell and have itching around the site of a sting, but much less so when used it.
I’m currently feeding 3 of my four hives since days have been warm but the fall flow is waning. They’ll start to backfill some of the brood areas as the queen winds down laying soon. Mouse guards (made of hardware cloth) are on and I’ll rig up some insulation in the next couple of weeks.
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You could be right Eva, my advice is based on what I have to work with here. I don’t feed an existing hive that has nectar in the frames, the bees tend to ignore syrup given when there is enough nectar coming into the hive. So I only feed syrup if the hive has used the nectar and beginning to eye the capped honey. The bees will consume nectar first in my cooler months or there is a shortage of foraging as in a drought. My late Autumn and Winter months are my high honey yield months.
Cheers
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Thank you everyone for your response, concerning bee stings it’s comforting to know that the sting doesn’t always generate a big reaction (because I had a generalised body allergy reaction once, but not an anaphylactic shock), I’ll check if BiteAway is available in my country, thank you for the suggestion.
Unlike Peter and similarly to Eva, autumn is very low yield in Lebanon and winter is cold and rainy for the bees to forage that’s why I asked if it is systematic to feed them in autumn. I’ll do as Peter mentioned, if the nectar is good I’ll leave them for now and recheck on them just before temperature starts to come down.
Otherwise I’ll do like Eva because apparently her weather in autumn is similar to mine.
Cheers everybody, and thank you.
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Nothing wrong with that idea Joe, in my Winter I wear jeans and a long sleeved shirt. The bees will often decide if they will use the syrup you offer but I find if there is any foraging to be had the bees will forage and ignore what you offer.
Cheers
Ok Peter, I’ll take that into consideration, I’ll wait and observe my bees, for now the weather is good and they’re more calm. I’ll have to check their nectar storage to have a clearer assessment.
Thank you Peter.
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Hey guys! 1 week ago, one of my hives swarmed (i caught the swarm and started feeding it water syrup). Today I checked on the hive with the virgin queen and i saw 2 emergency queen cells on 1 frame. And i am really worried! What are your thought? Shouldnt the queen go soon on her mating flight? And why is there emergency queen cells?
Hey man, I am not an expert on swarming, but I live in Beirut and I can tell you that my bees too are making a lot of queen cells and I think the weather is appropriate for them to try to swarm.
Concerning your other concerns I’m afraid that my experience is pretty limited to be able to give any useful advice in this case.
Hi Alexander, yes - the virgin queen that has already emerged in the parent hive (where the swarm came from) should be doing mating flights in the days after the swarm left.
But, the additional queen cells will result in more swarms from your hive - unless you take steps to redirect them. Here’s a really useful booklet to have on hand this time of year:
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It’s an excellent guide Eva, thank you a lot !
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Our lovely @Eva already posted one of my favorite booklets, but this one is extremely helpful too:
https://wbka.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/wbka-booklet-english-PDF.pdf
and this one:
https://wbka.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/a006howtodealwithacolonythatisre-queeningitself.pdf
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