Hey! I’m relatively new to beekeeping, starting in Eastern Tennessee about two years ago. I set up a hive two years ago – this Spring would have been the third year. There’s one brood box and one super. Last year the super was almost full of honey. My neighbor has a hive about 200 feet from mine that he set up one year ago – this Spring would have been two years. It also did well last year.
The hives seemed to be pretty vibrant through the fall. I checked on mine in early February, and it seemed to be as busy as bees are in the winter. I treated for mites in October with oxalate fumigation, though I’m still not good a counting them.
I left my home in Eastern TN to go play snowbird in Florida. When I came back last Monday (April 20), the bees were gone. I talked to my neighbor. He said that he noticed his hive was empty in late February. He also noticed “a million bees flying around” on April 8, which I suppose was my bees absconding.
I opened the hive today. There were a few dead bees about, and a couple of ants. There’s no bad odor. What I noticed was a layer of yellow and white granular material on the bottom of the hive and on the top of the frames. I don’t know what this is…
Any idea about why the hive(s) were abandoned? Thanks for any education you can give me.
I can only upload one pic, so here’s one of the bottom of the hive.
Hi and welcome to the forum. My only guess on the white and yellow granular bits is that it’s pollen. The dead bees might be a result of robbing.
The two primary reasons I’ve put absconding down to is:
#1 Small hive beetles have become established in the hive, to the point that they can’t overwhelm them, so they abscond after the queen has laid enough eggs to be able to fly.
#2 My second theory is that there wasn’t enough brood in the hive to be able to hold the bees to the hive itself. This is only my theory based on personal experiences. I doubt that this was the reason your bees absconded.
An inspection of the brood frames can tell a lot. You can see if there is hive beetle activity. You can also see by the look of the honey cells if the colony got robbed out or not. Robbing could be a third option, however I’ve only experienced this with very weak colonies.
Inspect the brood frames, and let us know what you find.
Hi @billo and welcome, sorry it’s under tough circumstances tho. I agree with Jeff about possible pest and/or robber incursions. But I would put money on this colony having swarmed a few times to the point where there were not enough remaining workers to defend against these, and they dwindled down to nil. Colonies surviving winter in good shape will be ready to swarm as early as March here in PA, so I think what your neighbor saw was swarming.
To me, the white/yellow sawdust looking stuff in the bottom tray looks like the bits of wax left in quantity after a robbing event. There could also be pollen in there.
If you can post some pics of the frames, we should be able to tell you more.
One more aside. My neighbors went ahead and set up a new hive with a nuc they got in early April. One thing i noticed was a few bees going from that hive over to mine and coming out. Not many. I assumed they were stealing honey.
Hi Bill, going by those photos it looks like robbing. You can tell by the jagged edges around the cells that previously held the honey. The wet patch in the middle of the bottom photo looks to me like the start of hive beetle activity. Are hive beetles in your area? There’s a lot of pollen in that frame which beetles like to lay eggs in. That wet appearance is typical of hive beetle activity. It might be a good idea to freeze those frames if you want to use them again. Even without hive beetles, they will be a magnet for wax moths.
PS according to AI, hive beetles are present in your area, so it’s something to factor in with every strategy you adopt.
You’re welcome Bill. Anything we can do to keep the beetle numbers down is always worth doing. It’s more important to gain an understanding of hive beetle culture, as well as how bees can cope with them.
It’s worth pointing out that only worker bees will chase them into hiding places, thus preventing them from laying eggs in brood, dead/trapped bees or pollen. Drones do no defending, which means they wont stop beetles from laying eggs. Therefore I try to keep my drone populations minimized to an acceptable level, which doesn’t impede the workers from doing their job.
