The saga of bad bees turned good

[Maggiesdad]

This is a puzzler babs - you definitely did the right thing to reduce them. I would even consider reducing them more... squeeze them all into one deep. They can't defend what they can't cover. Freeze the damaged frames to stop the damage, then give them back when the colony is ready to expand next season.

 

[Latestarter]

Agreed! Wow, what a turn of events... sorry your girls are dealing with that mess. If you put decent frames above the super, by later in the year, they should move into that upper deep. In the spring, you can move that back to the bottom and re-build up from there so you can get the super back on top again. I guess in reality it doesn't really matter what order the boxes are in... when the major nectar flows start, they will almost always move the excess honey to the very top of whatever boxes you gave them. Hope they can make it through the winter for you.

Knowing how heavy a medium super is when filled with honey, I don't even want to think about carrying a deep filled with honey... at least not for any distance. My poor aching back!

 

[babsbag]

Next week I will go back and inspect the frames again and take the ones with the worst moth infestation and bring them home and freeze them. If I pull another deep then the brood will either be on the top where it is colder (I think) or at the bottom closer to those dang spiders. (think Harry Potter books). I just love it when nature doesn't follow the books. If we make it to spring there will definitely be a massive home remodel; I like my hives neat and "normal"

I will also build some wax moth traps and see if that helps; not sure what to do about the spiders other than getting rid of the cinder blocks. It was certainly a mess, I had pieces of comb and moth larvae spread all over the ground, and then I was trying to mash it to get rid of the larvae. Working away from home can be a challenge, if I was here I would have grabbed a paper bag and some paper towels to remove the moths and clean off the hive tool as I worked. I was cleaning the hive tool on the edge of hive, at least the bees were cleaning up any honey in the comb I removed. My shoes were sticky,my gloves were sticky, ultimately my car was sticky...UGH!!

I will just have to be super vigilant with this hive this winter, especially if we get the wet one they are predicting. Hoping the Hopguard worked but I didn't see any mites on the bottom board so not sure about that. I will treat them again in the spring, don't want to stress them right now.

We are looking at some nice weather later this week so I will go and check my other hive and see how they are doing after their Hopguard treatment. I might take some honey from them.

My yard is full of bees. My neighbor has 10 hives and I have the flowers (zinnias are in full bloom still); I am ok with that. Hopefully his make it through the winter and will pollinate my orchard next spring as I won't get a new hive here until March or April and many of my trees will have bloomed already. I am more than happy to supply the trees.

 

[bonbean01]

Wow...had no idea just how much there is to learn and know when bee keeping...hope all goes well for your bees

 

[babsbag]

My friend that has this hive at her house tells me that there are no bees out and about today and she can't hear any. It has been cold and wet but I am thinking that this isn't a good sign. It has only been a month since I was there so I can't figure out why they would all be gone/dead in that amount of time. The queen was laying brood when I saw them last. I had treated them for mites, gave them feed, and tucked them in nicely.

Hoping my friend is wrong, we had a bad bad storm last night so hope they were just all hunkered down still this morning. I will go and check on them on Tuesday.

 

[Latestarter]

Really hope things turn out OK... you've lost enough hives already and don't need to lose another!

 

[Maggiesdad]

I hope they are ok,too.

When I made my top bar splits, I faced one new one West, right beside the mother hive that opened East. It's been really interesting to note the flight behaviors of the two hives this fall as the flying temps are more borderline. They are definitely not the same, yet both colonies appear to be healthy and strong. I hope those girls were just content to sit tight for the time being...

 

[Happy Chooks]

Hope they are okay. I know I even get freaked sometimes that they are not flying, but a soft tap on the side of the box and I can hear them hum.

 

[babsbag]

Well tomorrow will tell all. She said she couldn't hear them but she didn't tap the box I am sure. It was still cold and damp when she looked at them so I wouldn't have expected to see any at that hour; we had over an inch of rain the night before and the WIND... Hoping they were just tucked in. They seemed content when I was there before.

It would be just like a hive to survive all winter with no feed and no treatment and then die off when I start paying attention to them. Go figure. I think though that this hive swarmed this year, there were not as many bees in the hive as I would have liked to have seen.

So how cold does it have to get before start wrapping their hives in the winter?

 

[Happy Chooks]

I don't know, but it's cold here this morning at 28*.