11 of 11 hives on trailer dead

[little john]

Jim - that's a bummer - really sorry to hear your news.  Have you enough colonies to recover from this set-back next season ?
LJ

[BeeMaster2]

Jim - that's a bummer - really sorry to hear your news.  Have you enough colonies to recover from this set-back next season ?
LJ

Thanks LJ.
I have one Flow Hive and one regular hive at my house in Jacksonville and a 2 frame observation hive. I was cleaning up the hives and one of them had a bunch of bees fly when I opened it. My thinks she saw a marked, white, queen take off with them. They swarmed in a tall bush and I put a Nuc with some honey frames in in it. I have another hive that has some bees but it started to rain so I have not inspected it. Keeping my fingers crossed.
I will talking to a friend about using his bees to do splits for the Beefest 2018.
Jim

[tjc1]

Van, i think that your situation tells the tale - same that happened to me two years back and described in a paper later that year: mite load leads to virus load leads to the point where sick bees leave the hive to die (as opposed to really absconding - unless they abscond to try to find a healthier site, but no one ever seems to see the abscond flight).

[Acebird]

Chin up Jim.  You still have the equipment.  Nature will provide the bees is some of your friends don't come through at the beefest.  FL regs makes it tough to bring in hives.

[bobsim]

  Very sad news Jim,

  Wish I knew enough about these critters to offer info but I'm still learning. I can offer some bees though, of my three hives two are pretty full and I'm sure will swarm in the spring if I don't split them. If you don't mind giving me a hand (and advice) they're yours. They appear to be healthy to me and I don't use chemicals either.

  Let me know if I can help, best wishes.

[bwallace23350]

Sorry for your loss. That is heartbreaking.

[gww]

bobism
That is a very nice offer.  I am proud of you.
Jim
How long had you kept the hives going before the crash?  I am sorry to hear about it.  It is not spring and so for all I know now, I might be right behind you.  Your friend now treats, What are your plans for the future?  I wish the best for you and hope you give some follow up on what the state inspector comes up with as to cause with you. 
Good luck
gww

[BeeMaster2]

  Very sad news Jim,

  Wish I knew enough about these critters to offer info but I'm still learning. I can offer some bees though, of my three hives two are pretty full and I'm sure will swarm in the spring if I don't split them. If you don't mind giving me a hand (and advice) they're yours. They appear to be healthy to me and I don't use chemicals either.

  Let me know if I can help, best wishes.

Thanks Bob. Let me know when you want to split them. I will be there. You have the type of bees that I try to get.
I really appreciate your help.
Jim

[Acebird]

Thanks Bob. Let me know when you want to split them. I will be there. You have the type of bees that I try to get.
I really appreciate your help.
Jim

This is where a forum outweighs a local club.  Thank you Beemaster.  Sounds like help is on the way Jim.

[beepro]

I would let the split hive get a mated queen first before moving it to the new location.
Because fighting the mites will need the local drones with the resistance genes also.  If you move the split hive
into a treated location before the queen is mated then it will diminish the mite fighting ability of this hive.  On my II
process I try to get both hives with the resistance genes--the drones and queen producing hives.

[BeeMaster2]

Beepro,
Good point. Depends on when we make the split. Commercial beeks are all around me from about April to June. The are all commercial queens with a very short lifespan.  There are very few hives around the rest of the year but as my observation hive just proved on October 13, saw mating sign, that we have drones in this area. The Arlington area has lots of feral hives so if possibly I would like to leave the splits for mating.
Jim

[MikeyN.C.]

Jim,
Sorry to hear the bad news.
It would be interesting to know if anyother local beeks are experiencing the same thing.
Question I'm wondering if bees with mites-viruses were pushed around and drifted after the hurricane ?

[BeeMaster2]

Jim,
Sorry to hear the bad news.
It would be interesting to know if anyother local beeks are experiencing the same thing.
Question I'm wondering if bees with mites-viruses were pushed around and drifted after the hurricane ?

Thanks.
Not sure about that but per Rob, one hive crashes and the other hives rob it out, taking the diseased mites home with them.
Jim

[gww]

Jim
Not counting queen changes, what was your longest living hive.  On any dead outs before this big problim did you notice any trends, like build up became slower or crawling bees in the second or third year.  I am doing as you and not treating and am just curious on your experiance so far.  I had thought you had been at it for around 8 or so years and would just be interested in what you noticed.  I would not feel too bad as from all the oldtimer books I have read all the famous beekeepers had big losess and were considered really good cause of thier ability to build back pretty quickly.
I am only in my second year and so far so good but I don't have stories to tell and you do.  Just curious on your thoughts.
Cheers
gww

[cao]

gww

I can't answer for Jim, but I have one hive that has bees in it since I started five years ago.  Had 2 but the one swarmed this year and I didn't catch the fact the new queen didn't make it back until the hive dwindled to nothing.  I have three others that were splits my second year(4 yrs. old).  I also have probably a dozen that are three years old.  The rest are 2 years or less.  All treatment free.  I've had my share of losses,  most can be attributed to beekeeper error.  Either not catching a problem soon enough or not leaving enough feed for winter.  Some were just bees being bees.  I haven't noticed any thing like what happened to Jim.

p.s.  Jim.  Sorry about your loss.  I wish I was closer to offer more help than that.

[gww]

Cao
Thanks, that is what I am looking for.  I am at two years and am now at nine though two did not build up very good and I made them all a little lighter weight wise this year in the hopes of finding that spot where I don't starve them and yet they don't swarm way early (which is why I have nine hives).  Time will tell.  Everybody on forums keep saying they will die first fall, then spring build up, then in the second year and then in the third.  I don't know myself but am sure I am about to find out.  It really doesn't matter cause what will happen will happen and it is winter time and so time to play with ideals.

  I have tried to kill them with my moving of queen cells and causing of robbing and breaking of brood comb but so far they refuse to die.  I do know that can change.  It is nice to hear about others experiances.  Even the bad ones and not cause I like bad to happen to people but more to never forget what is possible.  I too would try and help in some way if closer.  I put myself in jims position in my mind and know it would be a hard thing for me and so feel bad that it happened to him.  I would still learn as much as I could from it.
Thank you for your responce and sharing your experiance.
gww

[BeeMaster2]

Jim
Not counting queen changes, what was your longest living hive.  On any dead outs before this big problim did you notice any trends, like build up became slower or crawling bees in the second or third year.  I am doing as you and not treating and am just curious on your experiance so far.  I had thought you had been at it for around 8 or so years and would just be interested in what you noticed.  I would not feel too bad as from all the oldtimer books I have read all the famous beekeepers had big losess and were considered really good cause of thier ability to build back pretty quickly.
I am only in my second year and so far so good but I don't have stories to tell and you do.  Just curious on your thoughts.
Cheers
gww

I did have a really have bad year. Only made around 6 gallons of honey this year. Gallberry was poor, I heard from the commercial beeks that they had the same problem. Them when we took them back to Jacksonxille it wasn't any better and it should have been.  Hives were strong all year. Right up to a few weeks before they crashed.
Jim

[bobsim]

Beepro,
Good point. Depends on when we make the split. Commercial beeks are all around me from about April to June. The are all commercial queens with a very short lifespan.  There are very few hives around the rest of the year but as my observation hive just proved on October 13, saw mating sign, that we have drones in this area. The Arlington area has lots of feral hives so if possibly I would like to leave the splits for mating.
Jim

  Jim, I just went out to look at my notes from last spring. I started with one strong colony and split it twice, March 17 and May 25. Both splits were successful. The same colony swarmed on April 17 and July 26. I was out of town for two months and when I returned in October it seemed to me they had swarmed again.

  I had a lot of problems with drift and had to shake more bees into the new splits for weeks even with laying branches over the entrances so they would re orientate.

  The latter of the two splits seems like it's doing well but they never really filled out the box last year (only about five bars of brood) and I had to rob honey from another to give them last month. I'm hoping they build up fast this spring and if they do it will be three hives to split and likely two splits from each. Maybe more but they're so sneaky about swarming. 

  When I started keeping bees I picked up a local nuc and a package. The package bees died off but the nuc bees have done well for three years now.

  Maybe we can talk about things I could do in early spring to get them build numbers early? You did mention something along those lines the last time we talked but I forgot.

[BeeMaster2]

Yes, this year I fed all of my hives when it warmed up with no food coming in. I put just 2 small 1/16" holes in each lid. It made a big difference.
Jim

[little john]

Bobsim - you don't say where your queens are coming from - so - if it'll help: when making increase by 'walk-away' splits, it's important to ensure that the splits are large enough to have the necessary size of workforce to raise a reasonable quality queen.  You can also reduce their workload by feeding, and by supplying pre-drawn comb.

One good method of ensuring you have an adequate number of bees in the box is to fill it with nurse bees, which are far less likely to abscond then foragers as they've not yet ventured outside of their home, and so have no bearings with which to 'return home'.

A good method of selecting nurse bees is described by Larry Connor in several of his online .pdf articles.  The links for these collections are:
http://www.wicwas.com/American_Bee_Journal
http://www.wicwas.com/Bee_Culture

Perhaps the quickest introduction to this technique can be found in BC2012-07.pdf which he's entitled as: 'Making Doolittle's Nucs'.

Essentially, the method involves removing a couple of brood frames from your target 'donor hive', shaking the bees off, then placing those frames in a nuc box placed above the donor hive with a QX between them.  After a short period, the brood frames will be covered by nurse bees which have ascended up through the excluder.  At this point the nuc box can be removed and placed in it's new location, with the assurance that the vast majority (if not all) of those bees will then stay put.

LJ