8 hives to 5 and an old queen nuc

[greenbtree]

I've had a bad day  :'(  Went to inspect today and replace a lid on a hive.  The one hive had a lid that was the wood and tin type and the last time I inspected I noticed that small ants had taken up residence between the wood and the tin.  So I have spent the last week whipping out a replacement lid (Three coats of paint,just wood).  You guessed it - went to switch lids and they had absconded.  Inspected the rest of my and my son's hives.  One that was small but doing o.k. had been knocked over by our escapee pony one night.  I had put it back together but it took a big hit.  Today it had one skimpy frame of bees and the queen sitting on a pathetic little patch of brood.  My son's biggest hive had no honey, hardly any pollen, hardly any brood, and that here and there.  It was the hive we bought in the Spring, no idea how old the queen was.  So we pulled that queen and two frames of bees (still a lot of bees in the hive) and put her in a nuc as a backup.  Did a newspaper combine with little pathetic hive (That hive was a queenless swarm that I re queened off a frame of eggs and brood that I had pulled off my son's hive that I just mentioned.)  Hopefully it will take.

I should have pulled the lid and just thrown on a piece of plywood short term.

Does the steep learning curve ever end?

JC

[ronwhite3030]

it gets a lil easier, but the learning curve never ends

[tecumseh]

as Robert Earl Keen wrote....

the road goes on forever and the party never ends....

[Culley]

Sorry to hear about your losses.
What kind of ants and what kind of problems do they cause the bees?
Several of my colonies cohabit with ants with seemingly no ill effects.

[AliciaH]

Sorry to hear about your day, JC.  But you and your son hang in there, there will be balance and the awesome days will come back around!

What did the pony think of the bees after the hive went down?  My horse was in the flight path of a swarm one day and didn't think too much of that at all! 

[Michael Bush]

>Does the steep learning curve ever end?

No.  That's what makes bees so addictive... you never stop learning.

[greenbtree]

I don't known what exact species the ants were, they were small and brown and going after the honey.  The bees seemed to avoid them, maybe they gave off a lot of formic acid or something.

JC