Wind Disaster on Day 2 of a New Colony -- Need Advice

[Kevin_Richberg]

Jeff,

That went, OK, but not great. You were totally right, the bees were ALL on the top of the Nuc-top and I wasn’t prepared for that. I did drop the frame in and then gave the bees a bounce to get them to fall back into the nuc. That may have been bad because as I was doing it I thought about accidentally killing the queen.

UPDATE on Windblown hive. I grabbed the first frame I knew from yesterday’s inspection had brood in all stages on it, and at the bottom were queen cells (3 of them) removing the frame ripped open one of them to expose a pupae. The other two I smashed myself because there was no changing my mind after I absconded with that frame the Windblown hive went BIZERK and it was the worst experience I’ve had with them. Worse then trying to right them after being blown over in a storm. I quickly put the hive back together with a fresh frame as quickly and safely as I could but I’m not experienced with this so I’m sure it could have gone better.

This is the frame I stole. At the bottom you can see the remains of the destroyed queen cells. I looked at it closely with no bees on it and there were eggs in almost every cleaned empty cell. It was more eggs than capped brood.

This is where those three cells were more close up

These are the smooshed queen cells

This was the scene after I moved the hive, added the frame with brood, shook the bees again (sadly), and resealed the hive and unplugged it again.

I guess my only question now is… What happens now? All crystal balls are welcome.

-Kevin

[JeffH]

Well done Kev, this is all part of the steep learning curve.

Do you use plenty of smoke? Give them a good puff across the entrance, then more as you remove the roof, then more if needed to settle the bees, more again before & after removing frames.

You can take a punt that the bees will stay in the box by not removing it, or you can close the entrance, secure the lid before taking the hive several miles away to a different location. If you’re going to do that, do it sooner rather than later. The bees you leave behind may return to the parent hive.

[Kevin_Richberg]

Thanks again for your help.

This is our first year with bees that survived the first month. Now I guess we have 3 hives? We started with the two Nucs on May 15th, and now it’s Jun 6th so that was fast work from these bees. I believe the windblown hive will also do the same thing and swarm considering what I’ve found in the inspection yesterday and the queen cells I smooshed today.

My last in hand resources is a swarm trap that we’ve had baited in our woods for a few weeks now. My partner suggested moving it from the forest up to the fence by the “Windblown” hive for when it swarms and I’m not immediately around to catch the event in action like I was today. Or we can just let nature happen. We were not planning on having more than two hives this year.

I did not move the Nuc box very far away. I moved it about 300 feet from the parent hive to a more manageable site for us. We have 27 acres so in theory I could have moved it very far away but wanted to be able to monitor it. If this experiment fails and we lose everything in the Nuc box I won’t be despondent since this is all learning, however I’m endeavoring not to make obvious mistakes.

How long should I wait before transferring the bees from the Nuc-capture box in the photo to a new hive box that I just ordered online?

Now that the original hive has drastically shrunk, should I put the entrance reducer on, take off the top box and consolidate that hive, feeding it until it builds up again?

-Kevin

[JeffH]

Hi Kev, sorry I didn’t get back to you earlier.

That IS amazing how quickly your nucs decided to swarm. If you are feeding them, stop feeding straight away.

Remember that excess colonies are saleable items. I think your better off having too many rather than too few.

Taking that nuc 300ft is the same as 3 feet, as far as the scouts are concerned.

Hopefully you wont lose anything at all. I will just tell you what I would do, based on past experience, then you can decide for yourself what to do.

You can prevent that windblown colony from swarming by breaking down the swarm cells, while opening the brood up with a bit of checkerboarding. You can remove brood frames containing the most sealed brood can also help. You’ll just need to monitor it every few days to see if the desire to swarm has passed.

That’s much better than leaving a lure hive for when it swarms. Leave the lure in place, you might catch somebody else’s bees.

[Kevin_Richberg]

I definitely would prefer the windblown colony not swarm. So the checker boarding method seems doable. Do you have any thoughts on what kind of disposition the hive will be in since this would be the third day in a row of entering that hive. Sunday was inspection day. Yesterday I absconded with a frame, and today I’d go checkerboard. Could that make them want to leave even more?

[Eva]

@Kevin_Richberg

This is our first year with bees that survived the first month. Now I guess we have 3 hives?

Winter is coming…colony loss is around 50%. Don’t be shy about having more than you planned for, and keep up that good proactive mite management strategy!

[Kevin_Richberg]

Good point about mites Eva. What would you recommend for the treatment of the new Nuc that’s just trying to get established. I was going to use Formic Pro on the deep hive boxes. It seems too soon after a major change to treat the Nuc box with only one drawn out frame in it. What are your thoughts?

[Eva]

Oxalic acid seems to have other treatments beat when it comes to impact on the bees and honey stores. I used to vaporize it with a wand, but switched to sponges a few seasons ago. Sometimes a late season additional treatment like Apivar is warranted.

[JeffH]

Hi Kev, if the colony is a cranky colony, they probably wont be happy with you, however it’s still manageable if you take the hive, maybe 30 feet away & work on it there, using plenty of smoke. The angry bees will leave you alone & go back to where the hive used to be. Once you’ve finished & the hive’s roof is back on, take it back to it’s original site, where the bees will be waiting to enter.

Another inspection wont make the bees abscond, or swarm. When I said to check every 3 days, make it every 5 days instead…

[Kevin_Richberg]

Another UPDATE:

We just caught the swarm in a cloud in front of the nuc. I saw it from the porch and we went out to investigate. It looked exactly like the pre-swarm we saw the first time right before they all left the box. But when I got to inspect closer I saw that some were leaving and some were going back in.

This was immediately after we noticed what was happening.

Then while watching it over about 5 minutes, they almost all went back inside. Right now the cloud is only 100 or so bees. Any thoughts. This swarm has been happily? in this Nuc since Monday and with the brood frame in all stages that I left with them Monday afternoon. It’s poured rain Tuesday all day and Thursday all day. So if they’re unhappy and want to leave again, today was kinda their first opportunity with temperatures above 70 degrees; although the wind is 10-15 mph.

Update from 2 hours later: They’re coming and going from the Nuc about 2-5 at a time like they were before as if nothing had happened.

Any thoughts? Thanks everyone

[JeffH]

Hi Kev, it’s likely that you saw a lot of cleansing & orientation flights. After 2 days of rain, I’m guessing that you saw 3 days worth of orientation flights in one day.

On a normal day, when bees are orienting every day, usually early in the afternoons, one would be forgiven for thinking that a colony is getting ready to swarm. Therefore 3 days worth of orienting would certainly look like a colony is getting ready to swarm.

[Outbeck]

If you see pollen going in with the bees then it’s likely they’ve settled in

[Kevin_Richberg]

I actually thought of that but then was thinking that wouldn’t make sense, but the way you described it absolutely makes sense. Today was the best day of the week since the move on Monday. The hive was completely normal all afternoon and pollen has been going in all day long.

[Kevin_Richberg]

I’m beginning to think my situation is getting out of hand and I’m wondering if I got really unsettled Nucs when I bought them because this stuff is crazy:

MAJOR UPDATES:

Hive 2, the hive that swarmed on Monday of this week, swarmed AGAIN:

I was walking back from the vegetable garden at around 10am and there they were pouring out of the parent hive, at it again, headed to the same exact tree they swarmed to the first time.

I had one more Nuc box leftover (the other was still housing the first swarm) and I cut the branch and dropped them in the box. This time I went and pulled a frame of brood from their mother hive (more on that later) because I had believed the ‘Windblown’ hive had already swarmed and left us completely because there was almost no activity there compared to it’s internal size the previous week in good weather (so I was worried there wouldn’t be any eggs like there were on Monday)

This time was much easier, the swarm was much smaller and marched right into the box and I moved them to a fourth location (we now have 4 hives I guess). I was able to get them straight into a deep because the hive equipment for the first swarm arrived yesterday and so I just put this swarm directly into the box I already constructed. They went in there with a frame feeder, sugar syrup, a frame of brood (only in later stages, no eggs).

Then since my suit was on I just powered through the rest of my bee work for the day and found disturbing results.
The windblown hive is now without eggs. It had eggs on Monday because I snatched the frame that went into the first swarm Nuc box. So sometime between Monday and today, all the eggs in the windblown hive hatched and the population looks like it could easily be missing 10-20,000 bees (they were a big hive to begin with). The top deep is 5 frames of all capped honey and they’re working on 6 and 7. The brood nest had only later stages of brood, and queen cells with the caps off.

The Hive that’s swarmed twice has no eggs, but that’s expected since it lost the laying queen to the first swarm.
The first swarm does have eggs (I moved them into a box I constructed this morning) and they had already drawn out a half frame both sides and laid eggs in both sides since Monday.

So to recap we have 1 hive (the first swarm) with a laying queen. And three hives with only bees, and various resources but no mated queens yet (no clue how many are in process). Is a virgin queen in the after-swarm (I’m assuming)? Is the windblown virgin on a mating flight (could be)? Does the original swarm parent hive have more virgins left to queen right itself (I hope so)?

Not all these hives are going to make it, I understand that. We planned for 2 and now have 4 with one escapee. It’s June 11th and I do worry about all this happening so late in spring. It’ll be summer here in almost no time.

Also my luck is going to run out with just happening to walk by these swarms (this is the second time it’s happened, although I guess I did miss one from the Windblown, so I’m 2 for 3 on being in the right place at the right time)
-Kevin

[Eva]

@Kevin_Richberg

Then since my suit was on I just powered through the rest of my bee work for the day

@Kevin_Richberg

a box I constructed this morning)

@Kevin_Richberg

I’m 2 for 3 on being in the right place at the right time)

Here we have the essential aspects of a solid beek - well done, Kevin

I’m not too sure if I’m following correctly but I think your eggless colony could very well be awaiting a queen that’s currently out mating. You will soon see. If no progress there, you can either combine those bees using newspaper between their box and a queenright colony, or donate a frame of BIAS to it.

@Kevin_Richberg

It’s June 11th and I do worry about all this happening so late in spring.

True, it’s late spring and dearth is around the corner here in PA, but the weather has been fantastic for keeping flowers blooming and nectar-filled so this peak flow is being sustained nicely. The frame I harvested on Thursday is nearly full again already today! The saying might be adjusted at some point in the near future due to climate change, but this year “A swarm in June is (still) worth a silver spoon”. Remember that the bees are deciding to swarm because they like their chances.

[Kevin_Richberg]

Thank you so much for your kind words and encouragement. It seems like everyday I have to observe behavior (which I actually enjoy so long as it doesn’t stress me out thinking the bees are having problems I can’t help them solve).

Just now I went for a hive check and all the hive entrances were behaving normally except the swarm that was hived yesterday. At their entrance was a lot of fighting:

There are flowers (especially clover) by the field load in every direction so it just seems so unlikely that they’d be being robbed, but they’re definitely fighting. Bees are trying to drag other bees (workers not drones) away from the entrance and throw them off the side. There are some bodies on the ground and some scuffles that fell on the ground and aren’t resolved yet.

I could stand next to the hive very closely and be completely ignored (I read that in robbing it’s much more likely a person will get stung standing within feet of the hive).

Why would a new swarm fight with itself, if that’s what’s going on?

[JeffH]

Hi Kev, without reading the whole story, it appears that the wind blown hive has swarmed.

In relation to the fighting bees, were there any bees on that frame of brood you added to the swarm? I wonder if they are the fighting bees. One thing I read years ago about combining swarms to prevent fighting is to dust all the bees with icing sugar. By the time the bees clean the icing sugar off themselves, they become friends & emerge as one colony.

[Kevin_Richberg]

Jeff, I’m sure you’re right about the windblown hive swarming and me not catching it. I’ll even wager it could have happened days before the other hive swarmed leaving behind 48 hour or 72 hour eggs for me to find on Monday just on the verge of hatching making me think the queen was still in there when she wasn’t and the 3 queen cells I smushed were from their stock to requeen themselves.

It just rained hard here, for about 45 minutes and I went out and 3 hives are quiet at the entrance and the second swarm hive – the battle continues, even in the rain:

There were some bees I couldn’t get off the frame when I moved it, maybe a dozen max. So that could be it. Is it possible more than one virgin left with this swarm and the lack of a single queen to harmonize has them in a state of disarray?

[Eva]

We put the bees in stages of disarray whenever we inspect, sadly enough. The bees that clung to the frame of brood are trying to do their duty and stay with it, while the rest of the bees in this hive feel that those bees are intruders in their home.

[JeffH]

Hi Kev, I was just guessing based on the little bit that I read earlier. I was pushed for time to read the story properly.

In relation to the fighting bees: A dozen bees hardly seems enough to create what you’re seeing. Did you move a hive away prior to where you placed the swarm? Yeah, I can’t think of why the bees in the swarm are fighting. There has to be a logical explanation.

PS, sorry @Kevin_Richberg , I misread the story. I think I understand now what happened. However still confused, it’s good that you have a laying queen. Hopefully she’s laying fertile eggs. I think the best thing to do now is recap the events, then write down the dates of each event, except for the queen-rite colony. Then check each hive 28 days from the event. If no brood is evident, give them a frame with eggs from the queen-rite colony. EVERY colony will make it. We’ll make sure of that.

I did mention this earlier about feeding. If you’re feeding the bees, stop it straight away. It could be the feeder that’s the reason for the fighting, regardless of the clover in the grass. Maybe you could take it out of the hive to see if the fighting stops.

Feeding the colonies could be the reason why those colonies are preparing to swarm so early. I sold some colonies to a bloke who started feeding them straight away. Before long, his bees started preparing to swarm.
That was @redlinexx Newly purchased nuc has queen cups - #3 by redlinexx