Author Topic: Hive in need (Read 3742 times)

derekNGA · « **on:** February 24, 2018, 11:30:28 am »

Im in west central Georgia.
Warm weather, near record high and looking like spring is hear.
Although early, maples are in bloom, other things blooming or budding.
Scenario....I have a very weak hive. Fall was doing well. Pretty much has nearly died out over winter, but not quite. Strongly suspect mites the culprit. Hive still has queen, and maybe a couple hundred bees and that may be generously putting it.
Ive cut hive back to 3 frames since they just cant care for no more if even that. Beetles are gearing up, and im trying to kill all I find in hopes they do not overtake. Yesterday it seemed all I found were in act of mating. The hive still has queen with maybe two silver dollar patches of brood in all stages.
Question...is it possible to take a frame or two from another hive with brood and leave the nurse bees and put into the weak hive? Meaning, will the imported nurse bees kill the hives queen and fight the few existing?
Or is it just best to let the hive die on out?
I just hate to give up on a hive and especially since the queen is still alive.
Options?

eltalia · « **Reply #1 on:** February 24, 2018, 06:57:05 pm »

.... and another one bites the dust.

This wintering gig in the USA really is in need of a huge rethink.

Bill

Beeboy01 · « **Reply #2 on:** February 24, 2018, 07:47:44 pm »

There is no easy fix for the hive, the SHB's probably have started laying in the weak hive already. Moving the weak hive over to a strong hive's location and putting the strong hive where the weak one came from should work. Do the switch during the day when the field bees are flying. The field bees from the strong hive will return to the weak hive, move in and give it a good cleaning while the strong hive will only loose it's field bees and will recover in a few days. Depending on how many field bees move in you might need to go to a 5 frame nuc. Adding a frame or two of brood will help but don't let the hive get too big. The house bees will leave the queen alone. It's a radical solution but it's what I would try.
It's still only a 50/50 chance of success but the best I've got.
What type of SHB control are you using?

derekNGA · « **Reply #3 on:** February 24, 2018, 08:15:54 pm »

Thanks Beeboy01. 50/50 sounds pretty good to me. I know others wouldnt waste their time trying to save but I dont mind.
Actually your suggestion sounds pretty easy to me. All day today all 10 (joking but not far from it) of the field bees have worked and even the guard and entrance fanner was giving it all they had. To answer your question of my shb control method. Im about to conclude there really isnt much control with the pesty beetles. I have in beetle blaster traps but really feel they are not doing anything since not enough bees to heard them into the traps. Ive tried the never wet method, it worked for about a week or so, beetles were all outside trying to figure out how to get in. Soon afterwards they were in. My findings were the bees built propolis over the never wet flange strips and then the beetles walked on up. Almost a good idea. I have some other brand beetle blocker baffle on order now. Hoping it works.

cao · « **Reply #4 on:** February 24, 2018, 08:26:28 pm »

Screened bottom board with oil pan underneath is the most effective way to kill SHB's that I have found.

Wish you luck with your small hive.

Beeboy01 · « **Reply #5 on:** February 24, 2018, 10:51:51 pm »

I use screened bottom boards with trays filled with soapy water. An unscented microfiber duster pad like a swifter duster pad will tangle the SHB's in the microfiber cloth. I cut them in half and place the pieces on the top of the frames on opposite corners.

little john · « **Reply #6 on:** February 25, 2018, 06:29:40 am »

Doing a hive-swap to boost the ailing hive's numbers with returning foragers is one way (good thinking ...) - the other would be to donate a frame of emerging brood (without any rider bees, to be on the safe side).

But - your biggest problem by a mile and a half are those SHB's. We don't have them over here, and long may that continue. They sound a helluva lot worse than mites to deal with. I'm surprised that the pharmaceutical industry and/or university researchers haven't leapt on this one yet - sounds to me like the SHB problem is a lot more urgent than either mites or neo-nics.
LJ

BeeMaster2 · « **Reply #7 on:** February 25, 2018, 06:46:52 am »

Derrik,
Your idea of adding a frame of bees is a good one but you need to remove the field bees. In order to do that, take a frame or 2 of bees, preferably mostly capped, put it in and open box and let it sit for about 10 minutes. The field bees will fly back to the hive and the house bees will stay with the brood. You can also shake a brood frame into the box to boost the number of nurse bees.
I have successfully kept silver dollar sized hives in my observation hive and had them build up very quickly. That hive should be building up by now.
I agree that the best way to kill SHBs is with oil trays. I have killed hundreds of thousands of them when I add oil to the trays.
Jim

Acebird · « **Reply #8 on:** February 25, 2018, 10:05:10 am »

Quote from: cao on February 24, 2018, 08:26:28 pm

Screened bottom board with oil pan underneath is the most effective way to kill SHB's that I have found.

The unknown in my mind is at what stage of their life are you killing them, before they breed or after? Are you killing the ones that are about to die anyway?

Bush_84 · « **Reply #9 on:** February 25, 2018, 01:37:36 pm »

Quote from: eltalia on February 24, 2018, 06:57:05 pm

.... and another one bites the dust.

This wintering gig in the USA really is in need of a huge rethink.

Bill

He lives in Georgia, which IMO doesn?t get winter.

Acebird · « **Reply #10 on:** February 25, 2018, 02:03:35 pm »

Quote from: sawdstmakr on February 25, 2018, 06:46:52 am

Derrik,
Your idea of adding a frame of bees is a good one but you need to remove the field bees.

I agree. I would not add field bees to a weak hive by any method. It is more apt to get the queen killed and the hive robbed out. On a really weak hive such as this I don't think brood is going to work either. How will they be cared for? To me your only option is to shake in nurse bees. Maybe a frame a day for 4-5 days. To me it is not worth it. I would rather try a strong split and use this queen for the split. But is the queen any good?

BeeMaster2 · « **Reply #11 on:** February 25, 2018, 03:07:38 pm »

Quote from: Acebird on February 25, 2018, 10:05:10 am

Quote from: cao on February 24, 2018, 08:26:28 pm
Screened bottom board with oil pan underneath is the most effective way to kill SHB's that I have found.

The unknown in my mind is at what stage of their life are you killing them, before they breed or after? Are you killing the ones that are about to die anyway?

Brian,
Oil trays kill all 4 stages of the SHBs life. The eggs and larvae are killed when the bees clean them out and the larvae never get a chance to turn into pupae and the adults die when they are trying to get away from the bees.
Sounds like a win, win, win, win.

Jim

MikeyN.C. · « **Reply #12 on:** February 25, 2018, 04:16:22 pm »

Derek,
I'm a newbee so take this as no experienced advice.
Maybe some of the more knowledgeable keeps can answer.
Knowing you have a shb problem, I assume the other boxes have same problem. That said if took weak hive and put on top of a strong hive with double queen excluder ? Wouldn't nurse bees move up ?

MikeyN.C. · « **Reply #13 on:** February 25, 2018, 04:25:31 pm »

Cloake board type , so gives entrance for top box ?

eltalia · « **Reply #14 on:** February 25, 2018, 05:15:56 pm »

Quote from: Bush_84 on February 25, 2018, 01:37:36 pm

Quote from: eltalia on February 24, 2018, 06:57:05 pm
.... and another one bites the dust.

This wintering gig in the USA really is in need of a huge rethink.

Bill

He lives in Georgia, which IMO doesn?t get winter.

"IMO" especially when strongly held and built from "sounds right
to me" does get folk in a whole lot of tangled mess, to the extent
some will spend many dollars and numourous hours creating
what they see from opinion against what experience hands them.

Pick your subspecies of EHB at whatever internal temp/rH of
the broodchamber and you will see clustering.
"Wintering" is merely a generic term for that behaviour - clustering
happens everywhere on the planet at one time or another in the
relevant conditions. That is the Science of it, not Opinion.
Clustering has been hapening here at my location for near on a week
now... it is the last ends of our Summer.

Again... much more attention is required to this in the Americas, the
statistics tell the story.

Bill

MikeyN.C. · « **Reply #15 on:** February 25, 2018, 06:14:58 pm »

Bill,
What did you think of my ?

MikeyN.C. · « **Reply #16 on:** February 25, 2018, 06:19:58 pm »

My Q's about setting box on box

eltalia · « **Reply #17 on:** February 25, 2018, 06:58:19 pm »

Quote from: MikeyN.C. on February 25, 2018, 06:19:58 pm

My Q's about setting box on box

Frankly...?.. in a flow the risk of the strong box robbing/attacking the
weak box is low, but still present. A better chance exists in supplementing
the colony (brood and young bees), buuuuut given the age of those
bees, the numbers remaining I would suggest that too is pointless
and may only serve to hold back the donor colony to an extent.
It is a matter of personal choice really, mine would be to , learn the lesson
and move on.

Quote

Wouldn't nurse bees move up ?

Under current conditions, no.. more likely those bees will
be handing the workload the bees create in inducing queen
laying patterns.
There is also the matter of pheromone identification... it
could all get very confusing for both 'colonys'.

Bill

MikeyN.C. · « **Reply #18 on:** February 25, 2018, 07:54:54 pm »

Is there not. Q on Q boxes ?

beepro · « **Reply #19 on:** February 25, 2018, 08:12:11 pm »

I have done this before trying to save a dwindling colony. Each day take a frame of
bees with the young nurse bees and newly emerged bees attached from the strong hive. Then
with a small tweezers one-by-one grab the young bee by its thorax to donate to the weak hive.
This way you don't have to worry about the foreign bees killing the queen. How many young
bees you want to add will be determine by you. You are good to go after a few thousands added.

BeeMaster2 · « **Reply #20 on:** February 25, 2018, 08:26:50 pm »

Mickie,
LJ did an experiment where he raised split hives on top of queen right hives with a high success rate.
I just finished making a double screen board so that a can split a large hive tomorrow. It makes a lot of sense that the pheromones of the queen right hive protect the queenless hive from robbing.
Jim

Dallasbeek · « **Reply #21 on:** February 25, 2018, 08:28:54 pm »

Jim,

And laying workers?

eltalia · « **Reply #22 on:** February 25, 2018, 09:54:59 pm »

Quote from: MikeyN.C. on February 25, 2018, 07:54:54 pm

Is there not. Q on Q boxes ?

As the OP reads, yes.. and a few hundred bees.
Your question is on nurse bees moving up. One
of the problems with that concept is pheromone identification.
What with bees at the top entrance investigating, and bees
at the "cloak board" figuring who belongs where, it would get
rather messy.
All this happening when really what is desired is bees to be
focused on rebuilding after a dearth.

Bill

little john · « **Reply #23 on:** February 26, 2018, 09:09:36 am »

Quote from: sawdstmakr on February 25, 2018, 08:26:50 pm

Mickie,
LJ did an experiment where he raised split hives on top of queen right hives with a high success rate.
I just finished making a double screen board so that a can split a large hive tomorrow. It makes a lot of sense that the pheromones of the queen right hive protect the queenless hive from robbing.
Jim

Just to clarify (for anyone not conversant with this) - when raising 2 (or more) nucs over a queenright colony, I've been initially populating those nucs from the 'parent hive' below, by placing open brood combs in the nuc boxes above a QX, so that nurse bees will ascend up through the QX and cover those brood combs - so that all the bees in the 'extended hive' originate from the same source (or at least think they do, as the open brood combs themselves often come from other hives).

Jim - do you remember discussions we've had in the past about problems with absconding when using divided nuc boxes ? Here's one guy's solution: http://mbbeekeeping.com/5-frame-nucs-in-single-brood-chambers/

As you will read, he mentions the problems of absconding and how best to avoid it - but - if it's going to happen, then he makes it as easy as possible for the bees to do this. Extraordinary approach. But maybe that's another technique worth trying ?
LJ

eltalia · « **Reply #24 on:** February 26, 2018, 06:42:00 pm »

To further add to LJ's clarification?
The OP describes a queenright remnant of a wintered colony.
That's bees at term, and as the OP puts "a few hundred".

Part of the rethink required in wintering within temperate climates
is to not deplete survivor colonys in boosting - or attempting to - dead
on their feet bees.
It should be the responsible response from the knowing to
read all the factors put in building advice for the newbie.
Anything else and we get to read/hear the same story year in year
out. Of course there is always personal choice, historicly much of
which has helped nobody.

Bill

little john · « **Reply #25 on:** February 26, 2018, 07:11:50 pm »

My 'clarification' was solely in regard to Jim's comment, "LJ did an experiment where he raised split hives on top of queen right hives with a high success rate." It was unrelated to any other post in this thread.
LJ

BeeMaster2 · « **Reply #26 on:** February 26, 2018, 11:56:45 pm »

LJ,
I read the link. It must have miss copied. I don't see anything about absconding.
Jim

little john · « **Reply #27 on:** February 27, 2018, 05:42:17 am »

Hi Jim - admittedly, it is a tad obscure. There are two references there which I think are relevant:

"If for some reason the queen is lost in one hive the bees will migrate over to the other side to strength that nuc."

"The nucs in one box need to be given both a queen cell or a queen. It works best if you don't gave one side a queen cell and the other a queen. If you do, then most of the bees will migrate over to the queen side and the nuc with a queen cell will find it hard to except the queen cell."

I read that as indicating that bees from one half of a shared box will 'abscond' (or migrate) from one side to the other if they consider that their chances of survival are better there. This being in marked contrast to a setup with two separate nuc boxes in which the residents of one box are undoubtedly unaware of conditions within the other, and so absconding/migration doesn't then occur.

He goes on to say:
"At this point a solid inner cover is over the top, the bees can't get from one side to the other. Once the queens on both sides are laying, the inner cover is replaced with a queen excluder on top so the bees can mingle." And that's the bit I find extraordinary, that he actually makes it as easy as possible for the bees to abscond/migrate, should they ever detect that there's an advantage in doing so.

Must say I would be a tad wary of selective winter clustering with his set-up, with a risk of one queen effectively being abandoned - as I've been reading some early experiments conducted around winter clustering, and one finding which stands out was that bees tend to be attracted to cluster formation itself, such that a larger cluster is more attractive to unclustered bees than a smaller one. Again, that suggests a basic survival mechanism: that a large cluster has a better chance of survival than a smaller one. Size - it would appear - is 'everything' in the honeybee world.
'best,
LJ

Acebird · « **Reply #28 on:** February 27, 2018, 09:21:32 am »

Quote from: little john on February 27, 2018, 05:42:17 am

Again, that suggests a basic survival mechanism: that a large cluster has a better chance of survival than a smaller one. Size - it would appear - is 'everything' in the honeybee world.

"Large" is a relative term. Large, in respect to a feral hive yes but large in respect to a managed hive can result in starvation. So much depends on the unpredictable future.

little john · « **Reply #29 on:** February 27, 2018, 09:46:49 am »

Quote from: Acebird on February 27, 2018, 09:21:32 am

Quote from: little john on February 27, 2018, 05:42:17 am
Again, that suggests a basic survival mechanism: that a large cluster has a better chance of survival than a smaller one. Size - it would appear - is 'everything' in the honeybee world.
"Large" is a relative term. Large, in respect to a feral hive yes but large in respect to a managed hive can result in starvation. So much depends on the unpredictable future.

WHAT ? I was referring to an experiment where unclustered bees were given the choice of joining two already-formed clusters - one much larger than the other. The majority of unclustered bees chose to join the larger cluster. Why ? I was suggesting that an underlying survival mechanism was probably involved.
My comments relate to that experiment only, and have got absolutely sod-all to do with feral colonies, unpredictable futures - or even the price of eggs.
LJ