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Unsure What's Going On In This Hive
The15thMember:
I'm not sure what's happening in this one hive of mine. This hive has been very successful all summer, until very recently. The hive has been 3 mediums for several months and I'm foundationless. On 9/21 I did a brood nest inspection of the hive for the first time in 3 weeks and found queen cups and hatched queen cells, as well as a mated queen. The following week I saw 2 mated queens, together on one frame. From this information I concluded that there was a supersedure taking place, and the following week's inspection I saw only one queen and figured the hive had dispatched the old queen and was back to normal. During these weeks the bottom box of the hive, which had all summer been the brood nest, was empty of brood, which I assumed was as a result of the original queen failing. The foragers had filled up a good bit of these empty frames with pollen. There was still brood in the 2nd box in all stages of development. I've been sugar dusting this hive for varroa mites weekly since August, which has been working well, and my mite count from the dust went down from 424 at the height, to 65 last dust.
This week I went into this hive and I noticed that the population was much lower than last week. I had noticed this week that the traffic coming in and out of this hive was lessened, but fall temperatures also finally hit us, so I thought it was just as a result of that change. There were very few bees in the top box, which is typical, since not all the frames up there are drawn. In the middle box there were only bees on 1/2 of the top bars, the left side of the box had no bees to speak of, and the powdered sugar from last week's dust was not cleaned up on the frames without bees. On the frames that had bees there were eggs and larva in all stages, all white and healthy looking, although there were some pupae being pulled out by the workers on almost every frame. The laying pattern looked pretty good, most cells were laid, although the ages of the larva were intermixed in some areas. All the workers also seemed normal, no shriveled wings or anything like that, although some of them seem to have no hair, but my other hive has a lot of bees like that too, so I'm just assuming it's because they are fall bees and are living longer. Then, once again, I found 2 queens in the box, one on one frame and one on the next, so I must have just missed one queen last week. The bottom box had literally 0 bees, with the exception of foragers who were coming and going at the entrance. The box also had leftover sugar from last week's dust, and some pretty substantial evidence of wax moth caterpillars tunneling through the unattended comb. So, what I did was removed the bottom box, took out 6 frames that had waxworm damage, put the remaining 2 nice-looking frames of pollen in the honey super. So the hive is now down to 2 boxes, and has been rearranged so the brood is in the bottom and the honey on the top.
So the question is, what is going on in here? Last week this hive had almost 2 full boxes of bees, and this week there are like 4 frames of bees. Why did the population decrease so rapidly? Why didn't the bees clean up the sugar from last week? Why does the hive have 2 mated queens and isn't doing anything about it? Any ideas?
Van, Arkansas, USA:
Member, sorry for the bee troubles.
I would guess abscond and the few remaking bees are robbers. This is why they don?t clean the sugar. However you mentioned queens, more than one: supersedure or swarm is reason for more than one queen.
Is any queen present this day?
The15thMember:
Yes, both queens are still there today. That?s one of the things that?s so confusing to me. My immediate reaction was a swarm or abscond but they are both still there. All their honey stores are still there too, as far as robbing goes. I had a little robbing situation with this hive a couple weeks ago, so I?ve been keeping a close eye on them and I?m fairly certain there has been no robbing in the past week.
Van, Arkansas, USA:
A note on powder sugar dusting. Not saying dusting is good or bad, just some thought.
Sugar dusting is stressful to the honeybees. Remember honeybees are 99 percent female and a person can realize this as soon as one opens a hive. Everything is spick and span clean, there is no dust, no dirt, no mold, no mildew; the little dainty females are very tidy and when a beekeeper throws a handful of sugar dust,,,,, well this is stressful to the female bees. Fact is honey bees are one of the cleanest critters on the planet.
How stressful is sugar dusting is anybody?s guess, maybe a little, maybe a lot. I have seen dusted bees that prior to dusting, were what I considered gentle, however, after dusting turn into stinging mad maniacs.
Blessings
ed/La.:
I will guess hive swarmed and the new queens are of poor quality because of the lack of enough drones or the weather prevented timely mating flight. I have read that queens interbreeding with her drones leads to higher brood mortality. That could explain brood of different age development interspersed. I would consider condensing hive and quick freezing any unused/questionable frames. In my opinion fall queens are of questionable quality. I am in zone 9 and had hive swarm yesterday. I caught it and caged queen in nuc. Took two tries. Boxed them and they left, next try caught the queen. Not sure what hive swarmed but have little faith they will have decent mated queen. Not enough drones.
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