two hives two stories

[rgennaro]

hello everybody
hope your bee season is going well. I received my 2 packages on May 6. I installed them in the 2 hives I had last year that died. There was tons of honey in there so I thought it was a good way to give them a start. There was also plenty of empty frames for the queen to lay. Queens were out by the following Saturday May 13. I checked them again today.

One hive is 8-frame, trafffic at the door has been high since day 1, and when I opened them May 13 I saw eggs, but not the queen. I decided to give them another box of mostly empty frames since it looked like there was not enough empty cells for the queen to lay (they had filled a lot of them with nectar and pollen).  This second box was almost full again today of nectar, pollen and brood. The queen is doing her job beautifully.

The other hive is 10 frame, and traffic at the door has been low since day 1. When I opened them on May 13 I didn't see any eggs but saw the queen walking around. This hive had 2 marshmallows on the queen box so I assumed she had taken longer to get out (the other one had only 1 marshmallow). I left them in one box. Today the situation was so-so. Bees mostly on 4 frames. Lots of brood, well organized on those frames. The other 6 frames were not used by the bees.

I took one frame of brood from the other hive and gave it to them and replaced it with an empty frame. ANything else I can do? What can explain this difference?

thank you as always

Rosario

[The15thMember]

Did you see brood in all stages in the 10 frame today?  Did the 10 frame have any honey or pollen?  Do you have a flow on right now? 

If you answered "yes" to all these questions, then I would guess they are just a little behind, perhaps due to the queen being slower to release like you mentioned.  But as long as they continue to grow, I'd assume they would catch up to the other hive soon.

If you don't have a flow on right now and they are low on stores, then I'd feed them, since they can't effectively raise babies without enough food.  I would especially feed them if you aren't seeing capped brood in the hive.     

If you aren't seeing eggs or very young larvae, I'd be concerned something is wrong with the queen.

[rgennaro]

I'll check again about the brood, but I am pretty sure it was there in all stages, definitely lots of capped brood. There is pollen and open nectar too. They have full frames of capped honey ... should I still feed them? 

[The15thMember]

I'll check again about the brood, but I am pretty sure it was there in all stages, definitely lots of capped brood. There is pollen and open nectar too. They have full frames of capped honey ... should I still feed them?

If they have food, and especially if you have nectar and pollen coming in (which based on the other hive's progress, I'd assume you do), then no, I wouldn't feed them.  As long as there are no other red flags, my guess is they are just a little behind the other hive.  Give them a couple of weeks, and if they continue to make steady progress, I wouldn't be concerned. 

[rgennaro]

hi everyone

checked the hives again this weekend. Pretty much same story but with a few twists.

Weak hive looks slightly better. Queen is laying (I saw brood at all stages) and bees are bringing in food, there was uncapped nectar and lots of pollen. Two frames out of 10 had space for the queen to lay. She is laying and the brood looks organized, but at different stages. In other words, brood cells are contiguous, but not all at the same stage (I am used to see a framed of contiguous capped brood, a frame of contiguous eggs, a frame of contiguous larvae, etc). More bees than last time, but remember that I gave them a frame of capped brood last time from the other hive. I did the same this time and did not add a second box (nights are still cool here).

Strong hive was trouble. I thought that by taking some brood out last time and adding that empty frame I would stave off swarming, but this time there were several (a LOT) of queen cells, most of them capped. I destroyed them all (I know, I know, wishful thinking), took a frame of brood out and replaced it with a drawn empty frame, and added a super (with queen excluder, two drawn frames with uncapped nectar from last year which I had frozen, and 6 foundation frames not drawn).

I am wondering if it's time for the queen of the weak hive to go. The bees don't seem to be concerned as they are not attempting to raise another one (no queen cells in the weak hive). Also I am wondering if the best way to requeen the weak hive is to put a frame with a capped queen cell from the other hive. If so, would I have to remove the old queen first or let them fight it out?

We are in full clover bloom here, and today it feels like we are in a forest fire due to the canadian smoke drifting all the way down to VA.

thanks as usual

[The15thMember]

Weak hive looks slightly better. Queen is laying (I saw brood at all stages) and bees are bringing in food, there was uncapped nectar and lots of pollen. Two frames out of 10 had space for the queen to lay. She is laying and the brood looks organized, but at different stages. In other words, brood cells are contiguous, but not all at the same stage (I am used to see a framed of contiguous capped brood, a frame of contiguous eggs, a frame of contiguous larvae, etc). More bees than last time, but remember that I gave them a frame of capped brood last time from the other hive. I did the same this time and did not add a second box (nights are still cool here).

This is generally a sign that the workers are pulling the brood for some reason; they are not allowing some larvae to develop fully, leaving empty spaces which are quickly filled by the queen.  It could be a brood disease or it could be mites.  Does the brood look healthy?  What are your mite counts like? 

I am wondering if it's time for the queen of the weak hive to go. The bees don't seem to be concerned as they are not attempting to raise another one (no queen cells in the weak hive). Also I am wondering if the best way to requeen the weak hive is to put a frame with a capped queen cell from the other hive. If so, would I have to remove the old queen first or let them fight it out?

If you would like to requeen using your other hive's queen cells, you would have to remove the old queen, or very likely the workers will tear the queen cells down.

We are in full clover bloom here, and today it feels like we are in a forest fire due to the canadian smoke drifting all the way down to VA.

 
It's quite hazy even all the way down here.  No beautiful mountain views today. 

[BeeMaster2]

Rozsario,
When bees are getting ready to swarm they start making queens. As soon as the first cells are capped, if the weather is good, they swarm. When they swarm, they take the old queen with them. That means that if you destroy all of the queen cells, you may have made the hive queen less. One good point it that there is a good chance that you did not find all of them. If they just swarmed the day before you inspected them, there is probably a good chance there are enough eggs/young larvae for the bees to make new queen cells.
Jim Altmiller

[rgennaro]

Thank you both.

I doubt they had swarmed already, the hive was choke full of bees. But, thanks for pointing it out, i thought they swarmed after the queen cells open. I will keep an eye on it.

This is a recently installed package so I ahbe not done a mite count. The brood looks fine. I caught a glimpse of a couple of bees that looked a little off. They looked "skinny" and lighter colored than the others. They didn't look right. I used frames from the hives that had died in the winter and some looked covered with some grayish mold ... can that cause something like this?

If the issue is brood disease
 then no reason to requeen. Will keep monitoring ....

Thanks

[The15thMember]

I caught a glimpse of a couple of bees that looked a little off. They looked "skinny" and lighter colored than the others. They didn't look right. I used frames from the hives that had died in the winter and some looked covered with some grayish mold ... can that cause something like this?

Probably not.  Bees usually do fine cleaning off mold, and gray as a mold color is generally nothing serious to worry about.  Were the lighter "skinny" bees also fluffy?  Like did they seem to have a lot of hair, particularly on their heads and thoraxes?  Bees that have just emerged from pupating will often be lighter in color and fuzzy, since their cuticle hasn't fully dried yet.

If the issue is brood disease
 then no reason to requeen. Will keep monitoring ....

Unless the problem with the brood is stemming from the queen.  If your mite levels are fine and the brood looks white and well-fed (the little larvae should be swimming in little pools of royal jelly and brood food), then it could be something wrong internally with the queen.  Maybe it's something genetic, where a large number of the larvae are aborting naturally or are carrying a gene that the worker bees know will cause developmental problems.  Maybe the queen herself is sick, and she is passing a disease to the larvae, or something is amiss in her reproductive tract that is keeping some of the brood from developing.  Maybe some of the sperm she has stored is affected with something.  Who knows, but if nothing else seems to be a problem, a requeen can't really hurt, in my opinion.         

[BeeMaster2]

It sounds to me that your hive is doing just fine. Pretty sure your odd looking bees are baby bees. I didn?t hear anything that sounded like you have a brood problem. The best thing to do is take pictures of the brood, reduce them down to under 200k and post them for us to look at. I don?t know how often you are going into this hive but I recommend that you wait at least 10 days between inspections. If you are disturbing them to often they may kill the queen.
Jim Altmiller

[rgennaro]

I am inspecting every 2 weeks. I'll take some pics next time and upload them.

Brood looked generally fine, but I am not sure this hive is doing "just fine". It's not growing, while the other one exploded.

[The15thMember]

 

Brood looked generally fine, but I am not sure this hive is doing "just fine". It's not growing, while the other one exploded.

The million dollar question here is "Why?".  What is the limiting resource that is keeping them back?  A hive at this time of year should be growing, so why are they having trouble making more bees? 

 

The best thing to do is take pictures of the brood, reduce them down to under 200k and post them for us to look at.

I agree some pictures would be helpful.   

[rgennaro]

so ...
the bees have been cooped up in the hives for the last few days .. I suspect because of smoky air and cold temperatures. Barely any traffic in and out.
Today finally air quality is fine and around mid-day the sun finally shows up briefly after a brief strong rainshower. I was walking by the beeyard and I heard a lot of buzzing noise: I go to look and there is a ton of bees all flying around the strong hive ... I stand at what I thought was a reasonably safe distance to watch and I get attacked repeatedly. I get stung, walk away, come back a few minutes later, get stung again ... I decide to let them be.

20 minutes later all normal (in the meantime the sun has gone back behind the cloud, temperatures have dropped again and rain seems to be on the horizon). Did they swarm and I missed it? I walked around my property but didn't see a swarm anywhere ...

[Occam]

so ...
the bees have been cooped up in the hives for the last few days .. I suspect because of smoky air and cold temperatures. Barely any traffic in and out.
Today finally air quality is fine and around mid-day the sun finally shows up briefly after a brief strong rainshower. I was walking by the beeyard and I heard a lot of buzzing noise: I go to look and there is a ton of bees all flying around the strong hive ... I stand at what I thought was a reasonably safe distance to watch and I get attacked repeatedly. I get stung, walk away, come back a few minutes later, get stung again ... I decide to let them be.

20 minutes later all normal (in the meantime the sun has gone back behind the cloud, temperatures have dropped again and rain seems to be on the horizon). Did they swarm and I missed it? I walked around my property but didn't see a swarm anywhere ...

How far away were you standing?

[rgennaro]

15 to 20 feet away

[Occam]

That doesn't seem very close to me. Have your bees normally beem good with you being there up to now? I have two benches about 8 feet from my hives I often sit and watch them from, only once have I ever had one bother me about being there

[BeeMaster2]

My first year I sat four feet in front of my hives or right between them. Never got stung. A big factor for me has been not using gloves. My buddy used to wear jacket and heavy gloves. I kept telling him he needed to get rig of the gloves. He got stung way more than me and I wasn?t wearing any protection. Often times after we were finished a bee would find him and sting him. I never could get him to stop wearing gloves. Eventually he quit working bees.
Try using the smoke, wait 10 minutes smoke again and wait 30 seconds. It should calm them down.
Jim Altmiller

[The15thMember]

so ...
the bees have been cooped up in the hives for the last few days .. I suspect because of smoky air and cold temperatures. Barely any traffic in and out.
Today finally air quality is fine and around mid-day the sun finally shows up briefly after a brief strong rainshower. I was walking by the beeyard and I heard a lot of buzzing noise: I go to look and there is a ton of bees all flying around the strong hive ... I stand at what I thought was a reasonably safe distance to watch and I get attacked repeatedly. I get stung, walk away, come back a few minutes later, get stung again ... I decide to let them be.

20 minutes later all normal (in the meantime the sun has gone back behind the cloud, temperatures have dropped again and rain seems to be on the horizon). Did they swarm and I missed it? I walked around my property but didn't see a swarm anywhere ...

If you were being attacked, it probably wasn't a swarm.  If they were cooped up for a few days, could it have just been a lot of new foragers orienting? 

That doesn't seem very close to me. Have your bees normally beem good with you being there up to now? I have two benches about 8 feet from my hives I often sit and watch them from, only once have I ever had one bother me about being there

You should basically be able to go right up to a hive and not get stung as long as you aren't standing in the bees' flight path.  I second Occam's question: Is this new behavior for them?  Also, is there any reason the poor air quality would have them irritated?

[rgennaro]

Jim I wasn't inspecting the hive. I was just watching from 15 feet away to see why the bees were going berserk.

These 2 hives have been very docile. I open them without smoking them and haven't been attacked once. So definitely new behavior.

I do think it was a lot of new bees getting oriented and they might have been over excited about finally being able to get out. But I wanted to see what the experts on this board would have to say.

[BeeMaster2]

One possibility is that the hive is queen less. They get very agitated when they are queen less.
But not always. I had one hive that would send one bee out and it would sting me right between the eyes every time I walked out to my workshop in Jacksonville. I moved all of my hives to the farm in the spring and that hive swarmed. I tried to catch the queen as she came out, like I have done before with other hives, but these bees kept bouncing off my face as they came out and I couldn?t keep my eyes open. I had to back off and put a vail on and missed her. They landed 12 feet up a tree. When I tried to use a bucket on a pole to put them in a hive the bees that landed on my head tore me up. I just left the lid off of the hive and they later left.
When they re queened they were calm as can bee. I would just remove/replace the queen. They will probably calm down.
If you are still in a flow you will probably make a lot more honey with that hive because they will not have babies to feed after eight days.
Jim Altmiller