As my name indicates, I am new to beekeeping and am struggling. I bought a flow hive last year and installed an Italian honey bee package in April. All in all everything went well. I fed with 1:1 sugar water for about 5 weeks. The hive seemed to be doing well and filling out the frames nicely.
In early June the bees (as I understand it) began bearding. Some research indicated this may be due to high temperatures but is common and nothing to worry about. It has in fact been very warm in North Carolina, USA (many days with temps over 90 degrees F) and high humidity. I was mostly concerned the hive may be getting too much direct sunlight in the afternoon as that is when the bearding would typically begin.
By mid June most of the frames were filled out so I added a super thinking this may also help lower the temperature inside the hive (I had removed the bottom tray by this point). It took a few days for bees to enter the super but eventually they did. No honey whatsoever has been produced in the super.
It has gotten to the point the entire front face of the hive is covered with bees. They seem to stay out there all day and night (even with overnight temps now dropping into 60s F). I panicked over the weekend thinking it was just too hot in the hive given the sun exposure, removed the super and moved the hive to a nearby spot that does not receive as much direct sunlight.
I am now regretting this decision and think I should have just them bee
I’m also a bit of a noob, but a couple of thoughts:
when you inspect, are there any swarm cells? Even with a honey super, if there is no space for more brood, they may be preparing to swarm.
Are there any local flowers blooming to provide food for the bees? I understand that when there is no flow going on, the forager bees don’t have much to do, so will disproportionately stay at home and beard.
Hi Tom & welcome to the forum. I’m not seeing any honey at all in those frames. Therefore I would suggest feeding them tor the time being.
How hot is your hive to touch? I paint all my hives white, which is cooler to touch, making it easier on the bees.
Also I would suggest to replace the bottom tray & close any added ventilation. The bees do a better job of air conditioning their hive with no added ventilation, which only works against them.
Make sure the bees have a handy water source.
I think you did the right thing by moving the hive to a shadier position.
Hi and welcome to the forum @NCNewBee. I agree that moving the hive to a shadier spot was good. However, I am not seeing brood on those frames besides a smattering of drone cells and maybe a few capped worker cells. So I’m thinking your colony could be queenless. When you last inspected did you see the queen, or any eggs & young larvae?
If not, it’s possible your colony already swarmed at some point and you’re in the midst of a brood break until the new queen is mated & laying, or the original queen simply died some time ago and her emergency replacement was unsuccessful.
For a package installed in April, you wouldn’t be likely to see honey storage in a Flow super. However, the colony should be well established enough by now under average conditions to have drawn frames that include a decent brood nest of four or more brood frames with honey arcs plus two or so solid honey & pollen frames on the sides.
As a first step I would remove the Flow super now, clear it of bees and store it away from pests until next season. Leaving it on without a strong colony in a good nectar flow leads to bees propolizing the cells and/or pest incursion. Next, if there’s no evidence of a queen you need to decide whether to buy a new one or get a frame of open brood including eggs & larvae young enough for the bees to make one. Then keep them fed so they can raise brood and store some for winter, and choose your strategy for varroa mites (if you haven’t already ).
I have not seen the queen but frankly am not even sure I would spot her considering my level of (in)experience. When I installed the package, I placed the queen box at the bottom of the brood box. I checked a few days later and the candy had been chewed through and the queen box was empty so I assumed she had successfully been released. I have not seen her since.
We have a creek about 100m from the hive. There are other sources of water around our property so I do not think water is an issue. We have several large gardens and everything here has been in bloom. There have been plenty of times past we saw bees covered in pollen entering the hive.
I’ve seen a fellow up the road with hives and am thinking it may be a good time to introduce myself and see if he can offer any assistance. Sounds like my best bet is to get eyes on the queen or make plans for a new one.
Hi Tom, you have definitely had an active queen in that hive in recent times. I’m seeing sealed worker brood, plus a lot of recently emerged bees. The timelines wouldn’t be right for a failed emergency queen.
In relation to spotting the queen: Don’t look for the queen per se, look for evidence of her presence. You need to be seeing early stage worker brood, moving up to sealed worker brood. That’s all you need to see, to be sure that you have a queen-rite hive. This photo shows what I’m talking about.
I would suggest you go in and have a look for sealed worker brood and grubs in the comb to verify if you have a queen. There seems to be a lot of empty comb there for your season.
Yesterday around 5 pm I removed the super and put the bottom tray back in place.
Just like in my first photo, the entire front side of the hive was (and still is) covered with bees. When I removed the super, the bees stayed attached to the front side. I placed the super box in front of the hive entrance and as of this morning the bees have still not moved off the super.
When I inspected the brood box I believe I saw the queen but can’t be 100% certain. There was a large cluster of bees in the corner and I believe she was in there (I inspected each frame and think I saw her). Most all of the cells are empty.
The bees seem super lethargic and are barely moving at all. There is a pile of dead bees under the hive and there are a lot of dead bees in the bottom of the brood box. I put out a 1:1 sugar water feeder last night and when I looked this morning it did not appear they had taken any. The bees on the front side of the hive were barely moving at all. Attached picture is from this morning.
I’m really confused by what is going on and still keep wondering if the original hive location had just gotten too hot and really stressed the bees. I had removed the bottom yellow tray thinking that would help with air flow but several posts I have read on here advocate leaving the tray in place. I had really hoped moving the hive to a shadier spot would help but the overall health of the hive seems to be at its worst.
I am definitely not feeling good about things at this point and am super bummed out. I do appreciate all your advice and welcome any additional.
Your queen is either non functional or non existent, and they appear to be starving. Def feed them, but use an in-hive feeder so other bees don’t come robbing and adding to the problem. A baggie feeder or the jar inside the empty super box/on top of the hole in the inner cover are easy & quick methods.
At this point I think your best hope for giving your bees a humane chance at a bit more life is to ask the local beek if you can buy 2 frames with capped worker brood, open young larvae and eggs with nurse bees still on them and at least one frame of honey & pollen from him. Like a mini-nucleus colony. You can decide if you want it to include a mated queen - would be more $ but best shot to end the season strong enough for winter. Then condense these with 1-2 of your existing frames (any with capped worker brood) into a 5 frame nuc box and feed continuously.
You can also just feed these bees as they are, which means they’ll die off eventually of course, but then you can save your effort and $ for new bees next year.
I’ve been feeding the bees and they have been aggressively consuming the sugar water.
I did a pretty thorough hive inspection with a second pair of eyes today - no sign of the queen and nothing about the frames leads us to believe she is present. There seemed to be a lot of drones. We spotted some workers entering the hive with pollen but does appear to be a lot of drones.
I am able to secure a mated queen this coming Tuesday. My hive appears to have virtually no capped worker brood. Is introducing a queen going to be worthless? I can try to secure some frames as Eva suggested from the keeper up the road but that is a bit of a long shot.
Hi Tom, I wouldn’t introduce a new queen at this stage. I would opt for a single frame of brood in all stages, especially worker eggs and very young worker larvae. Then see if the colony wants to make a new queen, after about 5 days. If the first frame doesn’t work, don’t give up, keep giving them a frame of brood every 6-8 days until they decide they want a new queen.
Your colony could be in the process of developing laying worker, which will likely be the reason why a colony will reject a new queen.
Are your drones emerging out of drone comb or worker comb? If drone comb, you could have an excess of drone comb. If worker comb, that will indicate a laying worker.
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