Fascinating stuff.

Thanks for sharing!

Rare double tap!

Maybe I'm too impatient. The cluster on my hive is just between two frames. Lots of capped brood and larvae on those frames but no eggs. I found the queen and they are getting syrup and pollen. They just don't seem inclined to expand the colony.

Are all your bees between those 2 frames? Not enough bees to keep more brood warm?

Yeah we had 36 degrees overnight. It has been warmer at night lately. I would love to have a couple frames of brood to drop into the hive.
Honestly, the queen isn't going full speed on laying eggs. I don't know if she knows something about the weather that I don't or is just not a prolific layer.

How old is this queen?

Last year's model.

Sounds like she needs replacing, unfortunately.

I’ve lost hives before, but this year I lost one seemingly overnight.

Last week? Booming. Bees foraging, busy busy. I didn’t do a hive inspection, but they’ve been looking good, like all of my hives.

This week? Nobody moving. The other hives are super busy, but this one- nothing.

I open it up and it looks frozen in time…….like literally time has stopped. Bees everywhere, they look like they were just moving. Bees between frames, inside cells, look good but totally dead. Tons of honey, capped cells, full of bees but there’s not a living thing inside.

Bummed.

Was there cold weather involved?

Wow! What could be responsible for that?

Think one/some brought some sort of poison into the hive?

Just checked my hive. She is starting to lay more. I think they have better weather forecasting than we do. I may replace the queen any way. I have to pick up some nucs in May. I will see if they have any queens available.

Any pics?  Had a friend lost several hives during a sudden cold spell.  Said the hive autopsy looked like they tried to cluster up but couldn't get together quick enough.  Stated it was small clusters of bees all over the hive.  kinda like a normal day at work doing house cleaning and then suddenly they noticed the cold setting in but couldn't cluster up fast enough to stay warm.  Ultimately all of the small clusters died.

Ugh! We had to move our hives, post haste!

I came to realize I have a gigantic white oak who's bottom is starting to rot out. If it had come down, it'd have taken out the entire apiary AND the new fruit trees I planted a couple weeks ago.

We moved them Friday night. All went well until a storm was rolling in and the last colony got pretty frisky! LOL I got nailed right through one of my gloves, as did the GF.

Today, we did inspections (not for mites - did that a week or so ago, we're GTG for now) and determined we needed to split the over-wintered hives. That got interesting too as they still seemed over-excited - maybe, because of the move(?). I think we did it in the nick of time, though, because we had two queens on one of the colonies. There were two other unhatched queen cells, so I'm guessing she just emerged.

We moved her, a bunch of nurse bees, capped honey frames and capped drone cells, eggs and larva to a new box, but they were actually so crowded in the other, original deeps, we're thinking we may need to split that one hive again.

That said, I think we're in nectar flow (there's a lot of syrup), so we may just put on supers and see what happens. Man! To think we could go from two colonies last year to SIX SEVEN this year! Wow! Crazy!

We'll be putting more deeps together tomorrow! Ha! And to think we thought we had bought too many hives/components!

What an adventure!

Edit: spelling, clarity.
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This happens here often when 1. The hive loses a queen and doesn't produce another quick enough and/or 2. Like you say the cold set in fast and the hive wasn't strong enough to get their shit together to survive.
The frames will frequently have up to 100+- dead bee clusters like little suicide packs.

I had a late loss just like that.    I fed them about two weeks before on a warm weekend day, and then I guess about three weeks ago now, it died off.  There was sveral frames of brood too.   They other two that died off (starved out) also had bood.  Not enough bees in the cluster I guess for a couple really cold nights.    So overall I lost three, but current have four.  Two of them have a crazy amount of bees.  I dont think  i've seen so many bees in a one of my hives ever.  Its been a pretty good spring so far, lots of flowers especially fruit trees, with not killer frosts since the fruit trees becan to flower.  I put supers on today.  Get them some more room.  Probably split next weekend, if its warm enough - but temps are supposed to cool off for the next week or two.

From my experience, this is a symptom of an underlying cause and 9/10 its high viral loads vectored in by varroa. We have taken part in some studies that have shown that adult bees with high viral loads often cannot perform simple tasks like clustering. As the bees get sicker, and their fat bodies are compromised their nervous system doesn't function correctly and they can form these little satellite clusters all throughout the hive instead of returning to the main cluster as the temperature drops. The only other time that I have seen this was when adding food above the frames (Fondant, Sugar, etc.) as it will make them more active during the winter months and if the temp drops, they may not be able to return to the main cluster. That is easily fixed by feeding up to a target weight in the fall to ensure that they have enough food stored in the combs where it belongs.

What I thought was my weakest hive is the one that survived.

This sounds a lot like what happened to one of my hives. Lots of bees, lots of stores, should have survived easily.
When I opened it up, there were thousands of bees on the floor, but clusters scattered all over the hive.
At first, I thought the queen had died so they had nothing to cluster around.

 

Interesting idea.  I never would have thought to believe the virus's would create issues with their thought processes.  They are such programmed little critters anyway.  I am happy to say that my winter loss was only about 4 hives out of 50 Honey producing hives this year.  A far cry from the 55% loss last season.  That said I didn't do any mite treatments on the NUC yard and lost 75% of the bee producing colonies. The honey producing hives got several good OA treatments though.  Although I failed to do the mite tests since i am overextended timewise I am content with that winter loss.

I do not test.  I understand the benefits of it and the good probably outweigh the bad but killing 300 bees per test seems anti productive.  However 300 bees in a hive of thousands is probably inconsequential, but I don't do it.  I use OA treatment starting in Mid summer.  I went from 55% loss to 8% this year. I contribute that to treatments.  My 8 frame yard received no treatments and I lost 75%.  I believe treatments are necessary.  If you don't thats fine but in my opinion plan on buying new bees regularly.  That said I ran into 2 customers this year that don't chemically treat.  1 does use the mite trays filled with oil and the other does nothing.  Both had a 100% overwinter success.  They run less than 10 hives each.  Cutting Edge can explain why he does what he does and appears very successful at it.  I simply don't have the time or energy to add another step to my beekeeping.  I am way to busy building premium woodenware, running anywhere from 60 to 120 hives/nucs, and processing and selling about 2,500 lbs of honey marketed locally.  And I have a part time job maintaining equipment at a small business.  I wish I could get some help from the spouse but she wants no part of anything except extracting and labeling.  Lots of directions for a 1 man operation to go.  This year the hives look good and splits are underway with 3 more yards to go.  I think the bulk of the hive sales are past me and it is smooth sailing soon...

The problem may not be the mites themselves, but the disease they carry.
Of course, if you kill the mites, you kill the carrier, but doesn't do a lot of good when you can't get 100% of the mites.
Lots of new approaches being tried, such as high humidity, frequent requeening, etc.

Last week I set up a new bee yard. The one close to my house was getting knocked around by cows.
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I just installed two packages today. Next week I pick up two (or more if they have them) nucs.
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I have extra hives set up for the nucs. While I was installing the packages I think I saw wild bees checking out the hives. I am close enough to water that I may draw in a swarm. Hopefully I can do a split this summer and bulk up the hives before winter. I have the one surviving hive at the house to move out here. I just re-queened that hive so I'll give them a week to settle in with her before I move them too.

Having a dedicated yard like this is nice.  I would seriously consider dropping the blocks to horizontal rather than on end.  I would worry about them sinking in unevenly and tipping over.  It seems to me that about 8" in height is optimal.  I keep my honey producers on concrete slabs and the 8 frame bee producers on 2x8s sitting on slabs.  Just my opinion!

I started with the wand vaporizer and found it way to slow.  I built one with plans I found on Beesource.com.  I am probably going to buy one made by Lorob Bees https://lorobbees.com/collections/oxalic-acid-vaporizer/products/instantvap-18v?variant=42951956857081.  It uses dewalt or Milwaukee batteries.   One of our members here markets one that seems to be the choice among mid size beekeepers https://www.amazon.com/ProVap110-Oxalic-Acid-Vaporizer-OxaVap/dp/B01N0V3HW9.  I think Cutting Edge has a higher end one that is lightning fast.

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Cows are stupid AND curious. A bad combination. I caught them looking the new yard over.

Are they better than propane foggers?

What are you using in the propane fogger?  I do have a friend that mixes everclear and OA.  I am not a fan of it.  If you do research on how the OA sublimates I don't think the propane foggers work.  If you are using them with mineral oil I don't believe they do anything at all.

Ok. Beekeeping story time.
A week ago I got two packages of bees in the mail. These were the bees I was supposed to get April 1st. I got them on the 24th. Thank you Mann Lake.
I put them into the hives I had prepared for them. Everything went smoothly.  I pulled the can of feed (empty) from the package and pulled the queen cage out. I got most of the bees shaken out into the hive and put the frames back in. The queen cage had the candy plug in and I left it alone. The cage has a metal strap for hanging, so I hung her between two frames and pushed them together. Hmm. Still a gap between the frames. I did this for both hives.
I went to check on them Saturday. I opened the first hive and was greeted with crazy comb and comb built over the candy plug. Pulling the cage out, yep, the queen was still inside. She was alive so they must have fed her. I opened it up to let her out and she immediately dove between two frames and I assume went to work.
On to the next hive. Almost the same thing. Crazy comb between the frames where the queen cage was located. They had eaten most of the candy and left enough that she couldn't get out. Again, healthy and fed. I let her out and started cleaning the excess comb from both the hives then refilled the feeders.
Bees are single minded. When I put them in I had some soggy pollen patty I laid on the lid while working. I split the patty and placed it in the hives. They immediately attacked the gooey mess on the lid before checking out their new digs.
I started feeding them 1:1 syrup then on the refill switched to thinner syrup to simulate nectar. I will feed them another week or so depending on how much they have stored. We are just getting into the nectar flow and it looks to be a better year this year.

ETA: this weekend I find out how many nucs I can pick up above the two I bought. I'm hoping for four more.

Excellent. I bought two hives from a local bee dealer that will be ready for pickup on Friday. We had a long ass winter and still have snow on the ground so we are late with packages and nucs. I haven't even planted wild flowers and our berries have just started very small buds, gonna be an interesting year.
I take a nibble of the candy plug and if it is hard, I give her some help and dig most out. I figure that she has been with them long enough and they know her smell by now.
We'll see how Friday goes, we are expecting cool weather and 80% chance of snow as of today.
Anyway very cool for you and best of luck!

Do you ever run in to Michael Jordan up there? He lives up there somewhere in your neighborhood.
We are about to start nectar flow any day now. Until they have a bunch of brood and resources I'll give them some extra. Just got to make sure they don't get honey bound.

lol, no but, I have not, but yesterday I had to turn around in Tom Hanks driveway because the road I was on was shut down because it still had 4ft of snow on it. We rarely see any of the Hollywood freaks unless they happen to be in town to eat or shop for food. I actually live in the same area but in a different town a few miles away from Sun Valley.
This is our spring


Got my two packages(one Italian and a Carniolan) yesterday and we installed them on a 55° sunny day. This is our first go with 8 frames right behind our garden yest in our pasture. We repurposed wood and built a fence around it to protect these from robbers because it is close to our home. Skunks mostly and I don't want them close to our house spraying dogs or or cows. I tilled about 2500sqft and sowed wild flowers and I'm not sure it will benefit my bees but it will benefit something.

One hive I mostly emptied, the other I put in half and set it to the side to see if they would fly in. A half hour later there was a highway of bees walking, not flying into the hive, still amazes me and pretty cool they knew right were to go.
I ended up top feeding with a mason jar with an empty box instead of entrance feeding based on the weather.
I'll change my bottom tray out with a screened bottom and front feed them starting no later than wed and check the queens.

My mistake. Michael Jordan the bee whisperer.

I caught a swarm today. Found out about it on facebook.

Dumb question and I apologize if it has already been answered, but is it worthwhile to keep a small hive to help pollinate your garden or orchard?  

I ask because I know we have wild bees nearby.   I saw them buzzing around my fruit trees this spring when the blossoms were opening.

Would more bees help?   Worth the hassle?

Thank you!

Second dumb question... how far away can the hives be from the trees and still benefit from pollinators?

Another idea I had was asking one of these hive location services to put hives on the back 12 acres as a low maintenance way to help keep the ag exemption going.   Would like my little hobby orchard to benefit, if possible.

I caught one of my swarms on sunday.   Probably from one of my hives, almost messed it up when the cluster got bumped off the limb and fell to the ground.   Should have been piece of cake.  
But they only flew about 15’ away and settled on another tree.  


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I don’t doubt I may have lost 1-2 more during the week while I was working.   This one I just happened to notice as I went to my garden and hives to check on if they all had good queens.   Three hives do not so far.   Maybe they have new ones not yet mated and not laying (I did splits 3 weeks ago I think) so their should be something by now as far as brood

Lots of honey in the deep boxes.  Took all the queen/honey excluders out.   Only one hive is using the supers heavily to store honey.    Amazing since the clover hasn’t even started.   I guess they were getting lots of nectar from fruit trees and russian olive trees.    Not that many dandelions this spring I dont think.  Clovers are just starting and need a few 80F + days to get them producing nectar.

Now seeing lots of blackberry vine flowers in SW Pa.   And the raspberries
Clover is still not plentiful but hopefully in next week or two

Last week I had a hive given to me, sight unseen. The gentleman was mowing his yard and the hive, cared for by his wife, ran him out.
The hive hadn't been opened since February 2019. I went to look and it was two deeps and two supers with a queen excluder over the deeps. It had swarmed last year and a friend of mine captured the swarm. He helped me evaluate it.
They were very pushy bees and we didn't stay long. We separated the deeps and put a super on each. It was too active to get any pictures (I wish I had). The plan was for him to take one super and extract it and give the honey to the owner. The owner wanted a half gallon only, packaged a certain way.
I decided to wait till night fall and move them then. What a sight. The bottom board has a hole in it making a second entrance. There must have been 2-3 thousand bees bearded on the front and back. I picked up the second super and the upper deep to take to the new bee yard. Even at night they put up a fierce fight. I had to wear my suit the whole way to the yard. I passed a deputy who did not pull over the man in the strange suit. (It was 11 pm)
I went back the next day and split the remaining box to make it easier to manage. It was too heavy to lift and control without getting lit up, even with a suit on.
With as many foragers as were out, I left a box with a couple frames to see if I can catch them too.
At the yard I started going through the deeps. What a mess they can make in four years. All the frames were bridged and had to be cut apart. I didn't find the queen but one box seemed to be the favorite to hang out in. I found enough supercedure cells to make three other hives. After they settle down for a day or two I may change that. Lots of honey and a decent amount of brood.
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They also have me some extra supers and deep and a hand crank extractor. I put it to use today on the other super. I got over a gallon of honey out of ten frames.
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The donors also said they have a bee suit and some other equipment if they can find it.
Some of the hive parts were rotting and most of the frames will have to be replaced. I don't know if the bees are mean or they just got too big. I can get new queens and will probably kill the queen cells and re-queen the others.
My friend kept the rest of the honey from the super he got and is going to make mead with it. I'm waiting to see if he brings me some mead or just the empty super.