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Author Topic: Abscond chain reaction  (Read 1271 times)

Offline ed/La.

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Abscond chain reaction
« on: October 13, 2018, 03:58:43 pm »
Hive swarmed few days ago. Still not sure what hive swarmed but will know when I look at brood. It was easy catch so I caged queen in queen excluder box and nuc them.  She escaped today and they bearded under hive. I put a few handfuls back in nuc looking for queen. With all the action it riled up neighbor nucs.Now they started to leave. I know from past experience that abscond can cause a chain reaction cause other hives to take flight and possibly abscond. Also seems to signal others that there is empty box to be robbed. Anyway I  caught 2 out of 3 queens but having trouble figuring out what box they belong in. No matter where I put them the cage gets aggressively balled. I swapped them back and forth with same results. These boxes are now mainly queen banks and if they get strong enough to survive my short winter great. This is happening right now so I  am going to look for third queen. If I had it to do over I would have moved 1st swarm a few hundred feet away or to different yard and I would not be having this problem. Any suggestions on getting caged queens in their correct boxes.
« Last Edit: October 13, 2018, 04:11:22 pm by ed/La. »

Offline ed/La.

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Re: Abscond chain reaction
« Reply #1 on: October 13, 2018, 05:10:35 pm »
The bees are returning  back into their boxes so I probably have queens placed correctly. Do not want to open  anything up for now as things are calming down. In the action of several hive taking flight some bees appear to go in wrong hive causing fighting and dead bees. Hopefully the queens will be safe in their cages while this  settles down.

Offline TheHoneyPump

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Re: Abscond chain reaction
« Reply #2 on: October 14, 2018, 01:40:38 am »
Interesting.  I have never before heard of nor seen this chain reaction you speak of.  Do explain.
When the lid goes back on, the bees will spend the next 3 days undoing most of what the beekeeper just did to them.

Offline ed/La.

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Re: Abscond chain reaction
« Reply #3 on: October 14, 2018, 07:23:43 am »
When they abscond there is a lot if bees in tight area causing a loud sound and probably some type of pheromone release. They do not immediately fly to tree often landing on hives close by. This causes the other hives to become alerted and they start to react. The whole apiary starts to take notice and it becomes very loud. Several hives can take flight. For me yesterday I  saw 3 empty out as this was occurring. Years ago I did a lot of cut outs and cut outs are prone to absconding. I had 10 large health hives abscond on the same day. With all the activity and empty hives robbing starts and this can spread quickly causing more hives to fight and possibly abscond. Boxing them in the same location seems to aggravate this because hive continue to roar for hours, often absconding again. Some bees go in the wrong hive aggravating other hives.

Offline TheHoneyPump

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Abscond chain reaction
« Reply #4 on: October 14, 2018, 01:52:03 pm »
I am fascinated by this description. 
     ... Perhaps, Africanized colonies?
« Last Edit: October 14, 2018, 02:34:39 pm by TheHoneyPump »
When the lid goes back on, the bees will spend the next 3 days undoing most of what the beekeeper just did to them.

Offline ed/La.

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Re: Abscond chain reaction
« Reply #5 on: October 15, 2018, 09:33:05 am »
The bees were not interested in me. I rounded up as many as I could with no bee suit. I used one surgical glove to scoop handfuls into nuc with no stings. The following day there was still a loud hum coming from these boxes. Perhaps I put the queens in the wrong hives. I have to release the queens from cage soon so will be interesting to see if they accept the queen and stay.

Offline TheHoneyPump

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Re: Abscond chain reaction
« Reply #6 on: October 16, 2018, 01:08:30 pm »
This still does not make any sense, at all.  Are you perhaps confusing absconding with prolific robbing flights around the bee yard?
When the lid goes back on, the bees will spend the next 3 days undoing most of what the beekeeper just did to them.

Offline ed/La.

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Re: Abscond chain reaction
« Reply #7 on: October 16, 2018, 10:58:17 pm »
There was no robbing going on.i experienced robbing before so I know what it looks like.It is obvious.   It happened like I explained in above post. I was there to watch the event as it was happening. They don't just fly up into a tree.They fly in circles making a loud sound and land wherever the queen is.I caught 2 queens at ground level on the side of a nearby hives. That hive took notice.  the third I used a step ladder that I just grabbed the bees in bucket hopeing the queen was in there somewhere.  If I was busy I would have just let them go but I had time so I rounded up what I could. More as a learning experience and for the fun of it. Plus I  wanted the queens. No big loss.  In the end I lost 2 queen banks. I still have half dozen spare queens in nucs with several brood cycles left before my 2 month winter. I think they have fair chance to over winter giving me queens for emergency or to start spring splits in mid to late February.