Hello! I captured a wild beehive from under a coworker’s shed. I did not confirm that I caught the queen. The hive swarmed shortly after relocating them to the Flow hive, but there are still some bees left. I am leaving them alone for now, but plan to do a full hive inspection next week. It is a small, weak hive. How can I help them prepare and survive the winter? I do plan to do a mite check next week. Should I be feeding them sugar water, pollen patties or both? Thank you in advance. I am located in Lubbock, Texas - still in the 80s-90s during the day, and 60s at night.
Rather than feeding them pollen & or sugar water, I would give them a frame of brood containing worker eggs, emerging brood, honey & pollen. If you have available resources, you can also donate some nurse bees to the colony, as well as another frame of brood about 10 days later.
Definitely feed the bees if you think they need it during a nectar/pollen dearth.
PS. Welcome to the forum.
Hello! Thank you very much for your post!
Unfortunately, I have no access to a frame of brood containing worker eggs, or emerging brood. I do have some previously harvested raw honey, which I have been feeding them. I don’t have a whole lot of the raw honey left, and plan to convert to sugar water in the next few weeks. Should I put some pollen patties down for them to use now, so they have something to feed (fingers-crossed) some brood? Thank you!
Hi and welcome! When you say you captured a beehive, was it a swarm or a cutout? Just wondering if any comb with possible brood in it already. I think feeding these bees is a good idea, but if there aren’t any eggs, brood or queen they won’t progress and will need to be merged with another colony or given brood frames as Jeff mentioned. Any pics?
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Going into fall with a small, weak, maybe queenless hive is not a recipe for success… As you’re surely aware, there’s not a lot of forage available now despite the temperature and Lubbock gets too cold in the winter for there to be much available until late winter or early spring.
Is it possible that they “swarmed” because they went back where they came from and where the queen was? How far did you move them? Have you checked under the shed again since they left?
Was this from your own hive?
Yes. When I harvested the hive, some honey fell down into the bottom tray. I also harvested some from comb that could not be salvaged for the hive. I saw some possible robbing of the hive, so I put on the entrance reducer and set up this feeding station and water station about 30 feet from the hive.
Good morning! Thank you so much for your quick reply!
One of my coworkers had a honeybee hive that set up under the floor in her shed, making her back yard inhospitable for her family and dogs. I was going to wait for Spring to set up a flow hive with a nuc from Texas Bee Supply, but I figured that I might as well try. The hive was HUGE - at least 12+ combs, lots of honey, and what I presumed to be brood. I will attach pictures. It wasn’t a perfect cutout, but it was a learning experience for me. I did not definitive identify the queen, but I took the brood combs with a lot of bees, so I hoped that she would be in there.
After 1-2 days, the bees swarmed away from the hive. I tried to put them back in the hive, but was not very successful, and they were gone the next day. I waited about 2 weeks, and then opened the hive. This is when the pictures were taken. There was a group of bees in the upper super, but otherwise, very little activity. I noticed that there were a LOT of dead bees and larva throughout the hive, but also on the bottom screen. I believe that honey dripped from the top super from damaged honeycomb and took out some bees as it fell to the bottom tray.
I did find a group of bees in the top super, which is where I have hope that there is a queen and a viable colony. There was robbing from other bees, so I put on the entrance reducer, and also set up a feeding station and water station about 30 feet from the hive, which has helped.
I know that the bees have a very steep climb to survive until Spring, but I just want to give them every chance possible. I plan to re-inspect the hive later this week, and I will take lots of pictures. I am open to any and all suggestions. THANK YOU!
Thanks for the pics - they clarify what I suspected. Your cutout did not result in a viable colony, because the flying bees went back to wherever the queen had stayed, and because the damage to combs and brood appears pretty significant.
The combs pictured are mostly honey comb. Those that have brood areas look pretty sticky from spilled honey, and there are just not enough bees to deal with the damage or care for any surviving brood. Without a queen or viable eggs & larvae, there is no colony - only a collection of displaced nurse bees most likely.
At this time of year, the main cluster (if it exists with the queen) will hopefully find a suitable place to live that won’t be subject to another relocation. It will need a lot of resources to rebuild and be able to sustain itself through colder months.
I’m unsure of the value of this idea, given all the ways it could miss the mark, but I wonder if putting together an insulated bait hive and securing it somewhere in an appropriate location that is commonly attractive to swarms would be worth trying? 
Then in spring, if ‘the’ colony is there, you with the help of an experienced beek in your area could plan out moving it into your or their apiary.
I will say that you clearly have a lot of zeal for bees, that with more preparation could help you onto a more successful path as a beekeeper. You also have a lovely new Flow hive, so please do take your time over the next several months before buying your first nuc to study and observe all you can about bees and their way of life.
I believe that you are right. I will perform a hive inspection on Friday and see if the clump of bees in the upper super are just nurse bees, but maybe they will requeen and there will be queen cells, and maybe even a queen or eggs.
I promise that I tried to be as gentle with the comb as I could, but I underestimated just how heavy comb filled with honey would be. I would be so gentle in putting it in the frames, and then the weight would cause it to fall out or apart. In all the videos and articles I read, I never saw anything about spilled honey in the hive - but I guess I should have been aware. I have taken a course on Beekeeping (Heroes to Hives), and read/watched numerous articles and videos - but I will keep studying and learning.
I do have a nuc coming in April, which should give me a viable colony. This was still a good experience. I built the flow hive, helped a coworker remove the bees, and learned a lot in the process - so I still feel fortunate. I will keep you posted on what I find on Friday. Thank you again for all of your observations and advice.
i started with much the same zeal but I have to say that my situation looked more promising than yours going into the season. I don’t want to be negative but this looks totally doomed to me. I failed with a ‘captured’ hive and I also had a failure with my first Nuc after that. The ‘captured’ hive was always a long shot and the first nuc failure was my fault for putting on a super long before the colony was ready - they absconded. having said all that, my flow super was mostly ignored and you will see many, many posts about people with bees that ignore the flow frames. I have yet to see success with the flow frames (1.5 years later) but I have filled the plastic with lots of melted wax and burr comb, and I feel a lot more positive about the prospects for next year. I would suggest that you do that anyway (put wax in the flow frames) because the bees wont be put off by it. I have a third hive attempt on the go right now (third time lucky) and this one was started without any initiation by me at all; I simply went to the hive one day in May this year, expecting it to be empty (as it was in April) and there were a few hundred newcomers there. I never intervened and the colony grew and the hive is 3/4 full now going into Autumn, with another strong nectar flow just beginning! I guess what I am trying to say is that this is an activity that will be full of downs and ups (said so deliberately in that order) and I haven’t stopped observing, reading or listening to all the amazing experience that this forum has to offer. Don’t give up when things turn sour, because they will, from time to time. It will come good and the joy you get personally, along with the beneficial environment that you end up facilitating, can only be a good thing!
I’m sure you did your best, John. For cutouts, its better to focus on salvaging as large as possible sections of the brood combs, and then you can judge where the queen is by the bees’ behavior if you aren’t sure. As you learned, it’s often counterproductive to band up all that honey comb. The good news is that there’s a simpler way to provide the bees with enough resources in their new box, by placing one or two ‘slabs’ of honeycomb on top of an inner cover, under a shim below the outer cover - sort of like a feeder setup. You can even piece together frames using the dry combs once they’ve cleaned out the honey and give it to them to mend and refill. Way easier than when full 
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