Hi. Earlier in the week when i looked in the side window it was full across the whole frame with capped honey and tons of bees. Now most of the capped honey is gone
and i dont see nearly as many bees. Should i lift up all the frames in the super. I have only had this hives for 4 months
Hi Pam, welcome. It sounds like your bees have swarmed, or possibly absconded due to pests. When was your last inspection and what did you see?
everything looked good on last inspection. Lots of bees and they had lots of capped honey. Do I lift out all the plastic flow hive frames and inspect each one? We checked for mites even in the brood cells and have not seen any. Why is all the capped honey gone?
Good to do before harvesting for sure, to check for capping. But inspections are more for the brood nest, looking for health changes, brood production, signs of swarm preparation.
If you mean a visual check, that’s not accurate enough. Varroa mites are endemic and easy to miss by just looking, so you’d need to do a proper mite count with an alcohol wash to be certain. Now is the time that their numbers explode while the bee population drops in regions with cold winters like ours.
Swarming is one reason, but it’s pretty late in the season for that now. One reason could be that the bees have brought the honey down into the brood nest to concentrate it where they will be clustered for winter. The other possibility is that they were robbed out, a common occurrence in fall.
ok thanks. I inspected the brood boxes and the one box was almost full so I added another brood box.
I also open up some brood cells to look for mites will do the alcohol test just got my kit
I do not see signs of robbers.
I will go check the brood boxes now. If there are so many bees do I put another super on top of the flow hives plastic frame box so they are not so crowded?
I really appreciate your help!
When was that last inspection? By any chance did you add the new brood box after the Flow super had been so full and capped? (That’s a heavy task!) If so, the bees would definitely have used up the honey to build comb and feed new brood.
Bee colonies in regions like ours are in winter prep mode, so even if you see a lot of bees now there will soon be far fewer. Brood production is decreasing and drones will be kicked out as the weather gets colder. Around here we might get a small second nectar flow from asters, goldenrod and other late summer/fall-blooming wildflowers, but the bees know it’s about to be followed by zilch and freezing temps for the next 4 months or so. So they may not even need the space they have.
Plan on draining and removing the Flow super soon, and possibly also condensing the brood area down to one box depending on how fully built or not your second box is. Store both away from pests and you will be ready to rock next spring!
Getting them through winter requires a solid mite treatment plan, insulation and knowing whether they’ll need to be fed. What have you been using for mites thus far?
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I usually inspect the hives every few weeks. Well yes I added the new brood box because the first one was filled after the honey was capped. So I need to remove the brood frames? What about in my other langstroth hives? Should I take out the brood frames? If I take out the flow hive plastic frames and the brood frames there is be nothing left in the hive. I think the bees are in the brood boxes because I have not seen swarms and the swarm trap that is very near does not have any bees in it.
Where there are so many bees in the flow hive how do I split them in the flow hive?
I have used other mite treatments before and need to get more. What do you suggest?
Thank you for your help!