What a difference 10 days makes!

[Kris^]

Last week I mentioned I inspected my hives, and found 3 colonies booming with lots of brood, two of a decent size but little or no brood, and one that was dwinding.  Then we got this arctic blast that went through, so I couldn't try combining or nucing the smallest colony.

So yesterday was warm again and I went out to see how they were doing.  There were three hives flying out a lot of workers -- and three doing nothing.  I donned my veil and went into the quiet hives.  As I suspected, the smallest one was a deadout.   :(    But even more mystifying were the other two hives.  They had dwindled down to about maybe a cupful of bees each, no more.   :(  :(   I thought they had died, too, until I found the small batches of bees in the lower box.  Strange thing is, there weren't many dead bees in the boxes.  Kinda like cturner's situation, it's like most of them just left, leaving behind a few stragglers.

Those two hives had problems.  One of them (a late summer split) had standing water on the bottom board when I inspected last week.  The other one lost a lot of a substantial number (5,000 to 7,000) bees when I didn't insert the SBB tray completely, and they apparently tried to enter the hive from the bottom and couldn't, and died.  THAT hive had been my best producer last year.  I can only surmise that the colonies had been stressed out because of the water and/or bee loss, and weren't in as great a condition as I thought they were.  There were dead varroa on the bottom of one hive, but last week was the first time I'd inspected the colonies since treating with OA vapor in late November.  I suppose good brood development at the end of winter is a better gauge of colony health than mere numbers of bees?  

We have ANOTHER arctic blast blowing through today and the next few days.  About the only thing I can think of doing now is to clean up the deadout.  Then drag the other hives into the workshop out of the weather and re-hive them into a double-nuc box I recently built.  Insulate it and put some frames of honey in there and see if they will come back -- if there's still a queen in there for them.  It doesn't look good though, especially seeing as they were sending out NO foragers at all yesterday.

OY!!!

-- Kris

[TwT]

The other one lost a lot of a substantial number (5,000 to 7,000) bees when I didn't insert the SBB tray completely, and they apparently tried to enter the hive from the bottom and couldn't, and died.  THAT hive had been my best producer last year.  

A commercial beekeeper here in Ga told me he use 1/4 inch hardware cloth on his bottom boards, he said the problem he found was that when the hives would swarm (outyard hive's) the new queen when making her mating flight would some time's return and try to enter the hive from the bottom and can't get through the small screen and he would lose the queen. he also said he has never had a problem with robbing either. I have #6 and #7 on my hives and leave them open all year. In cold climates you might not can do this but I have heard a few that do....

[Michael Bush]

It seems like a lot of it is what the bees are used to and if the nights are warm enough for them to survive if they get confused.  If you have the SBB open all the time they seem to know how to get back in.  But if you change it they get confused and, on a summer night, will have no trouble adjusting by the next day, but on a winter night don't make it that long.

[Kris^]

About the only thing I can think of doing now is to clean up the deadout.  Then drag the other hives into the workshop out of the weather and re-hive them into a double-nuc box I recently built.  

I did one better -- I dragged them into the greenhouse where it was much warmer than the workshop.  Both hives had queens.  One hive had so very few bees that they wouldn't fill the space between two frames.  I don't think it's gonna make it.  The other one surprised me, though.  There were enough bees to cover three frames.  I have hopes for it yet, as it filled out the nuc nicely.  They even flew around the one end of the greenhouse for quite a while, until about 4 pm when they all returned to the nuc.  If I can get one or both through the next few weeks it may not be a total loss.

I guess the silver lining is that I now have 40 frames of drawn brood comb, most of them with honey, for helping to start splits and packages this spring.

-- Kris