Desperate bees: honey on my food, big mistake.

[Van, Arkansas, USA]

Folks, I was just reminded how hungry the honey bees are.  I placed honey and siracha{hot sauce}on a beef steak and ate on my front screened porch.  Ten minutes later the bees picked on on the smell of Honey.  These bees were adamant on finding a way through the screened porch.  Even I was surprised at their persistence.

Here in N. Arkansas, in my immediate area is a severe dearth.  This area is all forest so goldenrod is very sparse.  There is bitterweed on road sides, that?s about it for flowers.

I need to do some inspections but I am concerned about opening hives.  I have 19 very strong hives and one nuc that I am feeding.  The nuc is coming along very well but not strong enough to withstand an assault from one of the bigger hives. 

Consider: These bees are desperate for honey.  So I am asking for advice on opening the Nuc, should I chance it or wait???  In a few weeks, the weather will be cool enough in mornings that scouts will stay in the hive.

Plan B is IF robbing occurs I can move the nuc to a friends house, another beek, 4 miles away.  My experience at this apiary is once a hive is targeted for robbing, there is no stopping the robbers except to move the hives miles away.  Entrance reducers only slow robbing down.  These are itialian honey bees and notorious for robbing, Honey gathering.

[iddee]

I would take the nuc to the friend's house early afternoon, open it there, and return it home near dark, early enough for the foragers to get back in before dark.

[Acebird]

I have heard of open feeding syrup 50ft away to keep the bigger hives busy then go ahead and take a look at the nuc.  I would not feed the nuc during the day.

[BeeMaster2]

Van,
Why do you want to open this Nuc? Does the front entrance indicate a problem? I would not do an inspection during a dearth in an Apiary. If that was the only hive that you have and there were no other apiaries near by, it probably would not be a problem.
Placing food within 50 feet of your hives is way to close. Some bees consider that too close to bother telling other bees direction and bearing. If you are going to try that, at least move it out beyond 100 feet.
I recommend that you make up a screen top for the Nuc, with an insulation board to cover the screen, and put that on the Nuc. Then you can see what they look like on top and what is going on at the entrance with out disturbing them.
Jim

[Troutdog]

Got to agree with fat bee man on this issue.
Like him I feed within 60 ft if hives often gue to lay out of apiary as close as 30ft. I have nucs and 3x deep hives all sharing open bucket feeders.
We are in a dirth.
No robbing here.
Been doing this several years.
Occasionally in the past I have lost a hive from robbing but my thought is that the bees know who is not going to make through the winter and the ones that were robbed follow the robbers back to there hive.
Only reason I suggest this is i have witnessed this in process and the hives attacked were a problem all season long and never flourished.
Also I run darker bees but have a fair bit of Italian crossover from open mating.
The old adage take your losses in the fall applies.
Limping along bees that didn't figure out the local environment only hurts my overall direction in improving the stock.
I also think we can safely say bees are domesticated at this point so all the feeding we do is paying the price for the way we keep em in the first place.

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[Troutdog]

Van
You sure they weren't Mexican bees and were after the hot stuff?

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[Van, Arkansas, USA]

Van
You sure they weren't Mexican bees and were after the hot stuff?

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Of course, the La Cha Cha bees.  Don?t think we have those in this neck of the woods.  Good one Trout.

[Van, Arkansas, USA]

Sawdust, Jim {Van,
Why do you want to open this Nuc? Does the front entrance indicate a problem?}

I need to feed syrup to this nuc.  The nuc was created from a small late swarm, end of July.  I don?t want swarms, however this swarm was doomed without my intervention as the dearth was on.  I couldn?t stand to let the bees die.  So I will build up the nuc and requeen next spring.  The nuc as of August 30th has 5 full frames of bees, good stores by heft test.

I did feed this nuc last Fridays morning, a cool morning with no bees flying so I decided to chance it.  So far, no robbing, 3 days later.  I slid the lid just enough to add syrup to an in frame feeder on what is now a double deep 5 frame.  No inspection, no pulling frames.  I am hoping the bees will wax out the upper deep.

I do need to make adjustments to some of my big hives that are 3 deeps.  I prefer to winter 2 deeps per hive as my winter configuration.  So, in the near future, I will open up some big hives and try to reduce from 3 deeps to 2 deeps.

This has been an unusual year, 2018: most of my hives became Honey bound, filling brood comb with Honey and in some cases ignoring my supers.  I even placed one super between the deeps and the bees stilled ignored the super.

Continuing with an unusual year, fifty percent of my queens failed to return from mating flights.  That is half of my queens, thing about that!!!  Catbirds living in my front yard, Tanangers living in my back yard where the hives are located.

Continuing with the unusual year.  In EARLY August my drones were kicked out of the hives.  Normal is September for drone eviction.  I would say, about 6 weeks early for drone riddance.  I?m guesding due to hives full of honey and all is well so the little ladies got rid of the boys early.

Continuing with the unusual year.  I saw no chalkbrood, no nosema, and not a single bee with dwarf wing virus.  These are all good things not to see, however with 20 hives, I would expect an issue, but I am pleased there were none of the above.

Continuing,,,, hive beetles were very low in number this year.  Where did they all go????  Normally hive beetles are a major concern in this area, North Arkansas and I employ a lot of time ridding the beetles.

Ok, I will count my Blessings, to date 2018 has been a very good year for the honey bees with the exception of mated queens.
Blessings

[2Sox]

I'm lucky that I haven't had to feed my bees sugar in almost ten years.  Nothing magical about me or my bees.  I just have tons of honey from cutouts; so much that I've given it away at times. 

I'm very wary of feeding during dearths also. So I feed honey after dark.

I alway run ventilated supers on my hives (from Kelley's) so I place the honey (mixed in with comb) onto styrofoam meat trays on top of the inner cover.  Everything is enclosed.  Seems to work fine.

[Van, Arkansas, USA]

Sox where do you obtain all the cut outs,,,, Bee removals???

I imagine in NYC there is every flower planted, something always blooming in the flower beds and NYC has millions.  Is this correct, Sir?

[ed/La.]

I open feed about 250 ft away with no problem. If I feed honey or add essential oils to syrup during dearth causes robbing issues. Adding wet frames in flow no problem but during a dearth can be a problem. Quickly checking a nuc has not been a problem. Often cutouts abscond ,the honey is low quality, and it is a lot of work. So the money needs to be right.

[2Sox]

Sox where do you obtain all the cut outs,,,, Bee removals???

I imagine in NYC there is every flower planted, something always blooming in the flower beds and NYC has millions.  Is this correct, Sir?

I'm advertised on Bees-On-the-Net and BeeRemovalsource.  I also subcontract for several large pest management companies. I get A LOT of calls through them. At one time, I was doing 3 a week in season.  Now I schedule maybe one a month.  But I still have about 40 pounds of honey from my last cutout. My jobs are usually outside of NYC, in surrounding areas. Mainly in Westchester County, Nassau County, and areas of northern NJ. Very country-like.

I don't understand you second question.

[Acebird]

I have open fed 10 ft away from my hives with no robbing problems.  The bees don't need to waggle dance to a food source 100 ft away they can smell it.
My wife was chased around this weekend by a honeybee.  She couldn't understand why the bee kept coming after her and then it dawned on her.  She was eating toast with honey.

[cao]

Continuing with an unusual year, fifty percent of my queens failed to return from mating flights.  That is half of my queens, thing about that!!!  Catbirds living in my front yard, Tanangers living in my back yard where the hives are located.

Continuing,,,, hive beetles were very low in number this year.  Where did they all go????  Normally hive beetles are a major concern in this area, North Arkansas and I employ a lot of time ridding the beetles.

I had better results with queens this year.  Close to 90%.  But your hive beetles must have moved here.  They have been bad since the weather warmed up in the spring.  I lost two 5 frame double stacked nucs and a full size hive to those bleeping beetles.  Didn't chatch them in time. 

[beepro]

Hope it is not too late to post.  I just swap hive position of a strong hive with a newly mated late summer queen
weak hive.  Now all the foragers from the strong hive are boosting the hive population of the weak hive.   There is a
name for this call the fly back method.   The newly mated queen has strong scent that the foragers will not ball her.  An
alternative method is to give them one cap frame of honey from each of your strong hives minus the attaching bees.  Overwintering is
that simple!

[Tam Tam]

I put 2 frames on a rack and then cover the rack and the frames nearest to me with a pillow case as I inspect the remaining frames. I also have another pillow case that I cover the uninspected frames with so there is only a small gap left open. It has worked well for me so far.