When I purchase a new package of bees yes I prefer packages over nucs , I take a frame with a little brood from a mature colony and give it to the new hive. I believe this brood helps anchor the new colony to the hive. I have never had a new package colony abscond, so maybe it works. I am not a fan of using queen excluders and other items to obstruct the hive entrance.
Drone bees cannot enter or leave the hive and young queens may slip through anyway. Beehives contain wild creatures that are beyond our absolute control. If your bees leave the hive you provided for them, rest assured that they had a reason — even when we are left to wonder why? Practice good beekeeping skills and understand that sometimes we have to let the bees be. Master Beekeeper, Charlotte Anderson shares her love of all things honeybee. She helps others become better beekeepers and teaches new beekeepers how to get started.
Her mission is spreading awareness of the importance of honey bees. She is a former Beekeeper of the Year in South Carolina. Excellent explanation. Here in the Midlands we experienced a spike in abscondings last year around November — cause unknown.
Thanks again Charlotte. Yes, I have heard about that strange behavior. I know we want to do this with everything but I still want to blame that end of summer thing on mites. Hi there I have a question for BeeKerper Charlotte. I would like to go to school for certification before I get my bees. Thank you.
Oconee County has a Beekeepers Association. I suggest you contact the Clemson Extension Office in Oconee. They should be able to help. I am a new beekeeper.
I started with 2 packs and am down to one hive. My question is, where can I buy another pack of bees for spring I have Carns, and really enjoy working with them. Hi Samantha, Sorry to hear that you have lost a hive. I hope you will be able to overwinter your remaining hive.
It depends somewhat on where you live. You can always order a nice carni queen later in the Spring and re-queen. Good luck to you. Thank you very much for this important information about keeping honey-bees. I learn a lot from you. Be blessed. I am a novice in keeping honey-bees. Please send me your newsletters. I so appreciate all of your publications to help us better understand what is happening with our bees and their colonies health and well-being.
I have learned a lot from you and you publish in very down to earth language that anyone can read and follow. Not a problem though because I am retired now and can take my time learning whenever and were ever I choose. Thanks a lot for all the help.
Great information! Thanks Charlotte!! We would love to have you. Please visit this link to sign up. THe other day a swam was put in a box with 5 frames using 3 old ones with wax from anoither hive. At night bees where in the box, next day ALL gone, Nowhere to be found!! Unfortunately getting AHB out of a roof is not an easy job.
You have to forcibly remove them by cutting open the roof and removing all the comb. The only good news is, they may never bother you since they are so high up. Hello from Norwich in the UK. I am very sad because this spring there are no bees upstairs in my house!
We have had the bees living in the airspace for the last 11 years without any problems but now they have gone. Our local beekeeping association would not remove them as it would involve brick walls being removed up a ladder- 30 feet. They swarmed last year and seemed unwell in the sutumn with lots of dead bees in the jasmine by the front door underneath the airbrick where they went in and out. Before the bees there was a wasp nest. I miss the buzzing vibration in the wall.
In Norfolk it is an old custom to tell the bees what is going on in the family and your life. Hi Hilary. I am fairly new to bee keeping. I live in Arizona in a rural area. Last April when I purchased a package of bees all was going well.
The bees were building comb and the queen was laying eggs. They were healthy. I was checking on them once a week. Sometimes once every two weeks. I provided clean water every week and started providing them sugar water and pollen patties because our rainy season was coming up. Around August they absconded.
I think I started feeding them a little late. Anyway, I thought they were gone, but my son found them at the end of January in a truck tire close to our property in a junk yard. The hive had grown quite a bit and they had comb in the tire. The combs had pollen and brood, but not much honey; we brought the tire back home and put the queen and bees back in the hive.
I cut comb from the tire and included it in the hive. They were all fine for about a week and then they absconded again. Again, thought they were gone for good this time. Yet again, my son found them in a saguaro cactus hole 25 feet in the air. A day or two later I was working in the garden and watched them abscond from the cactus into a staghorn cholla cactus.
I ran and got suited up, etc. Set up a new hive I had in storage for this year. I cut the whole branch off the queen and bees were on and put the whole branch in the hive. It was difficult not to just keep them on the branch since it is cactus. Anyway, thought I was all good to go. The next day I could see them entering and exiting the hive as normal. Third day and I went to remove the branch thinking they would be starting new comb.
They had absconded again. This time they had plenty to forage on; flowers blooming everywhere and I still provided them with clean water even when they absconded because we knew they were still around. The hives have no signs of bugs or anything, so I am baffled.
If you have any suggestions, I sure would appreciate them! I would hate the same thing to happen again this spring when I purchase another package. Thank you! There are no water sources close by other than what we have provided. We have no neighbors. They looked just like our Italian bees we purchased.
Did you ever test your colony for mites? This behavior could be starvation, mites or both. My bees left because they dont have enough honey to harvest when i checked their hive it was completely empty,, no Honey no broodlings,, just a few bees left abandoned by the colony it was pretty sad news.
I had a hive with a hive created queen who has been laying since mid August. The hive was doing well otherwise, queen was laying good brood pattern, a little small size wise but they were growing, marked the queen and all seemed fine. They had some honey and pollen and she was laying with no issues.
I checked it yesterday and the whole hive is gone, all the honey, some pollen. No evidence of robbing and no dead bees in the bottom. Could this be because of the Apivar treatment? I did per directions, 1 wafer split up. Yes, it could be because of the Apivar treatment or it could be because of a heavy mite load that they absconded. My bees absconded sometime over the past few days.
It was queen right, and brood pattern was good. The mite count was almost non-existent, so I was not treating for them, and there were no signs of any other disease. Then I noticed two wasps entering unmolested today, so I opened the hive up.
Nothing but empty comb and capped honey, a dozen or so unhatched cells, and maybe dead bees on the hive floor. Looks like they just waited for the last of their brood to hatch, and flew off taking most of the pollen with them. The hive right next to it is still thriving. You might try doing a sugar shake or alcohol wash for a more accurate mite count.
My guess is that they absconded because they were overwhelmed by mites. They can ramp up really quickly this time of year. Its really hard to say though. It could have been something else. Ants sometimes drive our bees, for example. The hive right next to the absconded colony is thriving with virtually no mites, so it must have been something else.
My bees recently absconded, but the queen was still in the hive. We extracted honey and treated for mites, then three weeks later went in to remove mite treatment and only a small cluster of bees left and a full super of honey gone….. Maybe all our honeybees have just decided to move back to their native Europe….
We just got a package of bees on Saturday we fed them sugar water put them in the hive Saturday night Sunday they seem to be doing well and they were being fed sugar water and this morning they are gone, Queen and all, why did they leave already?
The beek is my partner and he is a newbie. He has another hive that we got from a retired gentleman in Jax, Fl. That is doing well, or at least seems to bee. He has taken some bee classes through our extension office.
We are near Gainesville, Fl. Very excited that they have received funding to study the plight of bees and have built a facility to promote beekeeping. We are joining the logical bee club.
Thsst should bee helpful! Yes, sometimes closing them in with a screen gets them to stay because they start building and feel invested. I am in the Portland, Oregon area and we have had some rain recently. I am not sure what is wrong and would like to know what my next step should be.
Any ideas for a newbie beekeeper? Sometimes you can contact the place where you purchased the package and they will send a replacement queen or you may need to buy a new queen. It thought I had been very diligent at checking my hives, but I went out to check them today I have 3 and one was empty. My other 2 seem to be thriving. One of the 2 that are thriving is 1 I caught this year.
I am new to all this…. In my resurch i found frequencies effect bees the most, the grater the number of telephone cell towers the lesser numbers of bees. They hate emf ,wifi, and power stations. We just got a new bee hive and colony. Hi Hillary, I just started beekeeping last year. I live in the mountains of North Carolina. They were doing great, producing honey, and everything normal when all of a sudden they were just gone.
A few bees were left dead at the bottom but no sign of them anywhere else. We have relocated them to our home, on the far end of our yard, other side of the tree patch.
Some new bees have robbed some of the old honey, so we went ahead and extracted it and then put the part of the hive that had the honey in it. Do you think new bees will find the hive? I want to start a business to sell honey. I have 12 hives and it just happened again for the 2nd year in a row. Both times it was easily my hottest colony. The one which occurred a few days ago left in 2 swarms of only a few thousand bees each. They even left about in the box along with a ton of honey and pollen which my other hives were thrilled to incorporate.
I have bees for four years, but this season if you cal call it season in mid Florida I lost all my bees. In February I had three hives, then end of March I got two new queens and did a split on two hives for the two new queens. This happen almost everyday and I did an inspection of the hives, but found no problems I did not do a mite test with sugar powder in the past four years I never had a mite problem.
Three weeks ago one of my old hive and one of the new was empty. I checked the empty the only thing I saw was some dead bees emerging from their cells. However, do this carefully. I recommend only moving it a short distance each day while ensuring that it is only moved in the evening time when the bees are less likely to leave the hive. To ensure that the bees have sufficient quantities of food during a move, offer sugar syrup as this will provide them with the energy and nutrition they require until they get used to their new surroundings and find food for themselves.
The Top 11 Beekeeping Veils. The 14 Top Beekeeping Gloves. The 15 Best Beekeeping Suits. The 15 Top Beekeeping Books. In order to survive, a beehive needs a queen and there is only one queen per hive.
So, what happens if the queen leaves? How long will bees stay in a hive without a queen? New beekeepers who have Unfortunately, there are times when beehives do not survive, and this can occur for a variety of reasons.
It might be that a new colony has not had enough food to make it through the winter months, Skip to content. How to Make an Empty Beehive Attractive to Bees Swarming tends to occur predominantly in the springtime, but it can continue through summer and even into the fall in some places.
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