Prio to this all inspections were doen, I had no indications of mites or infestations. Both appeared healthy and fully in action. I am on the front tange in devner colorado, and the weather to say the least has been really mild on my guys.
Hive 1, two deeps, 10 frames each, one flow frame honey super. I went to do a quick inspection since it is warm and I noticed that a bunch of wasp seem perfectly happy crawling in to the hive unopposed. Bam whole gang is gone, left the honey they had behind and it was probably 8 frames worth. I see no obvious signs of mites, or infection, and prior to removing the honey super everything seemed nomrmal. There were some workers still like maybe 1-200, and they were in no way aggressive when I was looking through all twenty frames frame.
HIve two same setup as Hive 1, and it is cracking right along and still living large, same time for honey super pull. Bees are not aggressive, hive is healthy, and they had a good amount of winter storage prepped.
I took the bulk of the honey from hive one and and moved it into this hive as a combine, along with all the straggler bees that seemed to be hanging on to the bitter endin this hive.
I am clenaing out Hive 1 and locking it down for the winter, where I live in co, it should drop down enough (sub zero at least a few times) to wipe stuf out, but I will be freezing the frames all the same.
So with all that blabbering out of the way, my question is:
Is this a thing that can happen. did I piss off the bees by taking the honey super off?
Hi Rick and welcome to the forum. If you can post some pics there might be some signs pointing to the cause of your bees’ disappearance. For now I’ll reply to a couple parts of your post to give you some possible context & help:
Did you mean no indications from testing ie alcohol wash or mite tray checks, or by observation/your own eyes? You generally won’t see these buggers with the naked eye as they like to wedge between body segments. What kind of treatment have you been doing? It took me a couple years to get the hang of doing the right thing at the right time, and the input I got here was invaluable.
It is a thing that can happen at this time of year and into later fall months, but probably not because of removing the super. The possibilities I see, without photos at least, are that your bees got into some pesticide and died off, or were already carrying a decent mite load which is a death sentence at this time of year. This is because worker population in areas like ours with cold winters begin to naturally decrease in preparation, and the mite population increases. More mites, more disease, more weakness.
Your local Ag extension might offer testing on the dead bees and the honey if you live near farms that might be spraying at this time of year and you’d like to be certain, and like I said posting some pics could offer clues to folks with practiced eyes here. It will definitely be wise no matter what to do a mite count on your healthy looking colony asap, and plan to put treatment in such as Apivar strips if it turns out to be warranted.
You nailed it, I went back through and re-eaxmed tray with a microscope that conencts to an iphone, tons of dead mites. Dang it!
I have done alcohol washes and the whole nine yards and was looking good, this was a first years brood and I thought I got lucky with mite resistant queen so I got lazy. Darn darny darn.
I took steps on the remaining good hive and added formic strips, even thought they should be done breeding for season, jsut as a safety measure.
Sorry to hear it, but not surprised. I hope the formic pro does the trick. I don’t have experience with it so make sure you do whatever follow up is necessary including testing to see how it’s working. High numbers of mites at this time of year will put a even a bustling colony at risk of winter die off, because the bees don’t have as much stored fat as they need due to mites sucking it away
There’s a ton of info here in the Pests and Diseases section, here’s just one post:
