Well that sucks, sorry. I agree with the other comments it's a rob out. There was "probably" a bee war (though see #4)and it was all likely done and over in two hours or so. I think these were the issues: 1. Too much space for a queenless colony/late split. 2. You put the new empty in between the lower brood chamber and the upper filled deep. 3. Combined with problem 2, you had a lower and an upper entrance and the upper was right into the honey stores. This encouraged robbers by signaling the hive was weak in population but had a lot of honey. 4. It was likely robbed out by the original Balboa hive....I'd imagine you had field bees in that split that returned to the original hive and signaled where their stores went. The first robbing was probably accepted by the split bees because it was their former colony mates covered with their old queen scent and they were likely "granted access". At some point the split colony probably either decided to fight or the other alternative is that they just starved after being robbed out. It's possible there was not a robbing war and maybe that's why you never noticed a robbing war but just minor robbing signs. I'm sorry, I feel like I let you down by not pointing out the potential problem. It crossed my mind at the time I saw you put that empty in the middle with a top entrance. I thought it was just me being paranoid and that you probably had enough population with the capped brood you put in there. This is where we both learned a lesson. I also encountered the scenario I mentioned in #4 last year. I made a split and sat the box in the same apiary and the original hive started robbing the split. I caught it in time and moved the nuc split a half mile away and it fixed it. I split that colony again this summer and they are doing fine. I had a pretty strong 4 frame nuc split get robbed out two weeks ago and it was queen right. Robbers can be stupid aggressive in the late and early season. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, avoiding setting up a situation like that is the best way to avoid it but sometimes we push the limits of what's "proper" and we learn a lesson that readjusts what we see as acceptable risks. It happens....easy come, easy go....learn from it and make it up next season. Don't let it overshadow your tremendous successes this year.
Brent Don't you beat yourself up either. I think we were all so excited about Frankenuc drama hive working out, no one really looked that hard at the Balboa split. Its not what we were all focused on. And only an experienced beekeeper would have seen the potential danger, and this is not something Jim had seen before. We all were so happy at the way things were working out, we missed the snake in the grass.
I'm with Brent. I had a hive destroyed in 2 days by robbing I created. Nothing of this sort but the results are the same. It's amazing how quickly a mediocre hive can be overwhelmed by the robbing masses.
I think the important lesson to learn from this is, If Vino trims his beard he loses bees. The beard is a good luck charm. Like Samson's hair. You think its a coincidence bees "beard out" on a hive or swarm and beard. Its because the beard is a secret. With trimming it you reduced your bee powers. Fix immediately before next spring.
Just a guess: they got attacked and robbed out. Not being queen right and losing foragers that returned to balboa lower they just couldn’t fend it off. Don’t kick yourself, sometimes hives just don’t make it. If you didn’t split them Balboa might have left in a swarm.
This is making the most sense to me. I did notice the population was smaller after the first week with some of the bees going back to Balboa Lower. The remaining bees were young bees and hatching brood. Add in a super full of honey and they were defenseless. Ugh! Beekeeper fail.
Beekeeping is a lot like Las Vegas. We take risks and gamble. Sometimes it pays off and sometimes it don't. If you win you win big. Losses are easily replaced in general.
You don't do a split in September. If you thought they were going to swarm, (they wouldn't have this late) you check for swarm cells. No swarm cells they won't swarm! You need to do some reading, totally avoidable!
Wow sorry to hear this. I feel your pain. The main thing is you learned from it and by far your end results are paying off. I watched my neighbors hive get robbed by his second hive. I told him what was going on and he basically ignore me. A couple weeks later he had lost the hive. I since then helped him and hopefully he learns from his mistakes. He is back up to 2 hives again.
That title scared the crap out of me.... My poor little heart. I thought the "ALL" in that title meant more than 1 colony. Sad to see this split not survive and will be interested to read what other bee keepers in your comment section have to say as i'm sure some will have useful insight to share. As sad as it is i'm glad it is just the one hive.
You split the hive to keep them from swarming, if I'm remembering correctly, yes? As you found with the swarm that happened with the other hive, you aren't always lucky enough to find or catch the swarm, so while losing half the hive from doing the split sucks, at least you avoided Balboa swarming and leaving behind a queen cell/queen that might still have not managed to flourish and ended up losing both Balboa, and the half of the hive left behind.
Thanks for the content. There is a ton of basic beekeeping videos but fewer good beekeepers making the judgement calls. This one didn't work but your comment section is worth reading.
I agree with most of the other comments. A classic case of "storage wars" honey bee style. the volume of dead bees looks like 1/2 the number of bees you would find in a healthy hive. It sucks, but it's a learning experience for all of us. thanks for sharing. ...my condolences!
That stinks! I agree with those that have already said it was a robbing incident and ensuing battle, and unfortunately they came out on the wrong side at the end. Very sorry this happened to you, don't let it get you down, learn from it and move on!
Queen War's with the Smell of others :-) Getting close to Fall there. No Drones to meet a Queen. In October until Spring. Making a Fall Split is hard. I left mine alone 2 Months ago here in Central Cali. They are doing well until Jan Feb here. Then it is time to Split before Swarming. Bee Pro Active.
They do not analyze samples (bees, wax comb, pollen, etc.) for the presence of viruses or pesticide residue. Also the results are getting send to the sender of the sample and to the local inspector.
The majority of comments vote on a robbing. I guess that makes sense just because of the quickness of it. I still wouldn't give those boxes to other bees without scorching them first, just to be sure. I do think you do great work though. Keep it up.
Sorry about the lost hive. That has got to be frustrating. I have a question for ya though..... why save/ reuse components of the dead hive? Especially when you don’t know what happened.
It was a little risky and I will know when I check Balboa this weekend after those frames have been in there for a week. My gut told me it was most likely a robbing scenario and NOT disease... I'll see soon enough. If I was wrong, I will learn my lesson.
Hi there, sorry about your bees, that is very unfortunate and very sad. Don't be too disheartened, I hope that you will continued to build. Blessings!!!
I’m not a beekeeper but here’s my opinion. What changed?, the reducer. Also, all the honey was gone. Maybe they got trapped because the reducer was too sudden and drastic, then they consumed all their stores, then starved out. Seems weird that all this could happen in five days, but it’s still warm and their metabolism is still high.
I’m sorry about your hive. Thank you for sharing and helping us new beeks learn. Between your awesome videos and the comments, I have learned so much about bees and my own beekeeping instincts. Every day is a new adventure.
I make a lot of mistakes. They're not usually catastrophic and I do get very lucky... but whenever I can share knowledge, it feels good. Thanks for watching.
Don't feel bad. I lost all 40 hives in my bee yard in a matter of 3 weeks..And they were fed and all treated for mites regularly. I don't get it Prolly friggen chem trail poisoning.
@@vinofarm I'm going to switch to a Fomic acid mite treatment this year to in case it was mites that killed them. Since fomic acid kills mites in the brood cell.
Jim, we often look for another reason than ourselves as to why something bad happens to our hives. I've watched your temperatures every day and when you made the split, the nighttime temps were in the 50's, you're right, not freezing, but to bees, anything under 95 degrees is cool to cold. The brood need the warm temps to mature in a timely manner. So.. they vibrate to keep themselves and the ball warm, also warming the surrounding food stores. Having that empty super in the middle isn't like having a shelf in the house where when you want a can of peaches, you walk over and get them. The bee ball moves in whole up and down and around the hive. The outside workers, nurses, pass food from one to another through their begging action. It's the nature of things. Putting the empty box in the way of the stores basically left it invisible to the main chamber. They shook or vibrated themselves to death. Simple as that. Today, your warmest temp is 67, night will be 43. Think of these tiny beings having to make up 50 degrees of difference. Quite the task ahead. It's your 3rd year. I wanted to see you take honey this year, let them replace with feeding before winter. In this case, I'd worry on that, but I'd suggest heavy feeding now. They need the glucose, pollen patties will help. And don't let them run dry. The next 10 days at your place is not good bee weather, feed them from the inside. Have fun. See you on the next video. You might find this paper of interest. Smiles to you and your's. bit.ly/2zF40zf
the hives are simple to much for winter and the brood in the bottom?...not a good architecture idea...I always keep my bees squized in a 10 frame box to get the winter...Your comment in spot on.
Experienced beekeeper here. You split the hive and the queenless unit is demoralized because it has no laying queen. So it was unable to resist robbing pressure then the unit starved to death.
As stated above, the field bees from Balboa would return to their original colony (plus any younger bees already oriented to Balboa), leaving a reduced population in the split. The bees that did stay with the split had to protect and maintain a large area with that box in the middle...that's huge stress on them the way you put empty boxes, especially foundation in between like that. Maybe OK in summer with big population. Also putting empty and plain foundation frames in between the brood is stressful as well. So a young, demoralized, reduced population of bees trying to protect what they've got = robbing war or peaceful theft by known sister bees. Sad situation, sympathies. Ideally trying to do a split like that and have it requeen itself, the split would have to be moved several miles away to avoid field bees returning to original colony (with a drone congregation area close enough for the new queen to mate). Another consideration in letting bees raise a queen from brood is that it may result in an inferior queen. They'll build emergency queen cells over larvae and the oldest larva they choose will be the first queen to emerge to kill the others. Ideally you want a very young larva fed royal jelly from as early as possible to get the best quality queen, not one that was fed worker food for a bit. Oops, kind of late, just looked at dates.
You can't expect that boxes and frames can be in use for years without accumulating increasing amounts of mold spores, bacteria, pesticide residues and other things harmful to the bees. I think beekeepers need to start using sanitizing practices of regularly rotating and cleaning boxes and frames, as well as limiting the swapping of frames and boxes directly from one hive to another whenever possible. Hand and tool cleaning between hives is another basic procedure to consider. Have spare 'sanitized' components available for routine hive modifications. Of course cleaning should be as harmless to bees as possible, steam cleaning, hydrogen peroxide, ozone, UV, sunlight, and perhaps very safe soaps. etc. Good luck. b.
Actually nature itself is utilizing cleaning practices, but beekeepers will not allow it. For example....wax-moth will destroy/eat wax combs and other bugs like roaches etc. will clean the mess up with bacteria to take care of the rest. It is a natural way in nature to to take care of old combs and for bees having to make new combs. and to interrupt diseases.
It kills the capped brood in a relatively clean and humane way. The frames are then put back into the hive and the bees will completely clean out the cells. If you leave dead brood out too long, it goes rotten and wrecks the wax.
I would suggest you start to remove boxes from all your hives as getting late in the season now and colonies will be reducing in size and dont need all the added space to keep warm.
This weekend is condensing weekend and feeding has already started on the small hives. October for us starts to have chilly nights, but there are still many more beautiful warm days ahead.
It was a rob out, and then a starve out. This time of year they should be gaining weight for winter. This is a clear sign of a weak flow and hungry bees taking advantage of a hive that was split up and given too much space to occupy. There shouldn't be a super in between this time of year and they should be reduced to one entrance maybe 3-4 inches based on the hives strength. I recommend removing your supers and leaving what you want to have over winter very soon. Time is running out for feeding them up and them being able to cure the feed for winter. If you have a super full for each hive thats perfect.
This was the best comment at this point. Im not sure how soon temperatures starp dropping towards winter at Your apiary, Jim, but bees should be stimulated to build up brood with light syrup and then fed heavy syrup to be packed by summer bees, so that wintering bees are not exhausted before 'their season'.
I know nothing about bees and i am not going to act like i do.I just love watching the videos you made and watching you progress from a small farm last year to what you have now, i am sorry for what happened and i hope you learn from the mistakes made and grow!
Pretty sure it is not pesticides, because some of your other hives would also be affected. My guess is going to be robbing. Too much space to defend, and not enough bees to defend it. But, as I have tried to do, learn by our failures. Ask yourself what could you have done differently, and remember that moving forward.
if there is a national bee organization I would get cups to put these dead bees in, and call entomologists and ask if you could send them the dead bees. I would send them to who ever responded positively, but not send them to anyone who does not want them. This is so puzzling to me and without a lab to inspect the dead bees I don't understand it. If it were pesticides then the other colonies would show what happened. I don't get it. This very process has always worked for me.
Hive robbed out! Seen the exact thing five days ago in one of my weaker hives. Went through brood box and before I knew it the air filled with bees from other hives in a feeding frenzy so I closed up hive. The entrance was cut down to the smallest opening on the restrictor. Returned few hours later to find many bees still looking for entrance into the hive. Moved hive to another yard and the next day, upon opening, found bottom board covered as yours in dead bees. So many the small opening was blocked from the inside. I had no upper entrance, thankfully. This time of year we must be extremely careful when opening hives as well as restricting access to the weaker hives. My bottom board look just like yours and I know mine was robbed, for I watched the whole process. Must of been a major battle in the box with losses on both sides.
Hi Jim, I sorry to see your video. The same thing happened to me about a month ago. I live near Boston. The hive was doing well - about 7-8 frames full from a nuc obtained a month previously. They seemed slow-moving so I had a look and there was a ton of bees dead and dying on the bottom board just like you showed. No sign of varroa on the screen board at all. I suspect perhaps pesticide poisoning. There was about 2 frames of bees (incl the queen) left. I fed them fresh syrup and a pollen patty and they perked up but never grew so I added those bees to my other hive (newspaper method and killed queen). A mystery.
Definitely an acute event, probably robbing since the other hives are fine and the entrance was wide open. I do have to say I think you should be reducing your hives' volume, not adding boxes at this point. The flow is over and it is time to condense them to get organized for winter. Love you videos, thanks for sharing!
If you don't know what it is, you don't know whether it is a disease either so I would not have put anything of that hive near another hive, until knowing what happened.
Life is not worth living with no Queen. After a few days the bees get super upset and don't protect the hive. Might be a good idea to add a double screen board between the hives with a few pulled eggs in cups on a bar in the top hive. The bees will make a queen cell and your good. Too bad that looked like a strong hive. You should consider going single deeps in the winter. They will fit. I add a 2nd deep in the spring for splits.
I personally think maybe a disease. I wouldn't have mixed the equipment. You now have a chance of it going to that hive. I would rather be safe than sorry. I know most beekeepers say bull to that thought. I just wouldn't play russian roulette with that myself. Sorry to see that happen. On the up side, how many hives you have climbed to in just this season is awesome.
Same happened to me. Pesticides. Somebody sprayed something and they brought back contaminated nectar. I had one hive die like that out of 15 in my yard.
So, so sorry to hear this! I have no advice to give about what might have gone wrong, but it looks like others have some great points. My only advice is this: If you have a dog, make sure to dispose of those bees someplace where the dog cannot find them. I had a hive die in the middle of last winter and I just dumped the bees out on the ground thinking I would clean up the area when we had a thaw. Well, we had the thaw, but I didn't get to the dead bees before my dog did. Apparently, dead, rotting bees are delicious. Who knew? Unfortunately he was seriously ill for about 48 hours after. Dead bees coming out of both ends! He's OK now, but man, you do not want to have to clean up that mess!
So sorry! Personally, i would never reuse equipment from an unknown death or sickness situation. Set it asside, let it freeze over winter. Were there piles of dead outside the entrance?
No, they were 99% inside the hive. I had a gut feeling it was a robbing scenario. I'll know if there was a problem with the frames when I open up Balboa next. Thanks.
If this is the one you think threw a swarm, I’m guessing a combination of robbing and decreased bees to warm all that space is what did them in. Still, you are doing great with all your splits this year!
Jim, I bet all there food was gone. This is what happens when you spread the recourses to thin late in the season, Im not criticizing, It happened to me once too. Start feeding anything that has a lot of unhatched brood or they will eat all the food when they hatch. They are growing girls. Lots of brood requires lots of food. Also they need good winter stores. Its do or die time. I wish you the best. I feel your pain! Pollen patties and syrup until it gets to cold for them to take. Good luck!!
Some experts say splitting a hive without a queen / you should have moved the queenless split at least 50 ft.from the original hive . The reason is obvious . Once the split has an established queen and is laying .then it can be moved closer to the original hive with the old queen .....What happened in the video is the reason . Remember bees are used to the pheromone of the old queen and the smell of their sisters who wear the same smell .Bees in the hive bathe in that odor .They fan it all through the hive . They identify their sisters living in the hive by the strong smell of the queens pheromone ...In the new split the pheromone was faded . So during the raid the sister bees were killed ; While the bees in the split recognized the odor of their former queen and did not defend themselves ....
1 entrance only for defence. Or close it off for awhile and/or move it. Your hives are massive and the instinct to fill is still high. Harvest your honey and size them all down and feed them all. Been there pal. Always seems such a waste when so many bees die.
Hey man, I know the feeling, sometime it happens. Have you thought that maybe you reduced the entrance to late? That looks like the results of an heavy robbing (or either cooked bees)
To late of a split. At the time of the spilt there was only 2 brood cycles left. That split would have never built up in time. Hive was doomed from the start.
Well, the hive right next to it swarmed and made a brand new queen during the same time frame. And Balboa hive requeened itself at the exact same time last fall. These bees have it in them to start a new queen in late September. They've done it several times. We shall see.
Small reducer hole? Maybe robbing that got enough dead on the bottom that it blocked clean out and the rest ended up trapped and died? Kind of like the winter clean out worry? Edit: I posted that about 1 minute in the video before you commented on that same thing....
I drilled a extra one inch or smaller entrance in the lower box just for this reason ,water and dead bees can block the entrance suffocating the rest , in one occasion bees were exiting through the top hole ,sure enough bottom entrance completely blocked by bee wax and dead bees coming out of the winter
Put the brood, the frames that still have hatching brood and those dying bees, into one of your smaller splits, see what happens, if they live, rejuvenate its just robbing, if the other hive get effected it's most likely pesticides
Chronic bee paralysis virus (CBPV)? Highly contagious and can kill a hive in a matter of days. Bees moving in slow motion is a good indicator. CBPV is often confused with poisoning.
Chill would have had a bunch of bees in cells producing a cluster around part of the brood Robbing out will have a lot of cell cappings mixed with the dead bees The few wiggling near-dead bees in the pile on the bottom board has me a bit stumped
The population must have dropped fast due to robbing. The night before I discovered this, it did get chilly and we had rain. I think those remaining survivors were just chilled out and that's what was falling to the pile of the dead. Lesson learned.
I know I'm two years too late, and I apologize if this has already been stated. I just took a course in beekeeping and one of the segments was what to look for with diseases and causes of hive failures, and this looks exactly like pesticide/ herbicide contamination example. Bees groom each other and touch each other, etc and when they fly through a chemical, they can bring it back to the hive and contaminate each other. We even have a website in our state that we can sign up for so that farmers (voluntarily) will notify beekeepers of when they're going to spray so that they can keep their girls looked up. Here, one of the problems is the wineries. Your channel is great, by the way.
probably robing. or wasps or yellow jackets. i have had them kill off a hive by choking it out and blocking small entrances with a few wasps.. then again im in michigan and we have mud wasps here
Feel your pain. I know a sucker punch is a sucker punch and I hate to lose one bee none the less a whole colony. And I understand too late to send for testing or such but for future reference you may check out and register your hives with the USDA and also BeeCheck Apiary Registry map by FieldWatch for your state . They will help you find the cause of these head scratching incidents. These also help airplane spraying companies keep track of hives and makes them aware of Hive locations for pilots. Pilots that error will be held responsible for errors causing something like this due to what they are spraying. It doesn't help you with this incident but for unexplained bee loss they will send inspectors out to get to the bottom of something like this if it happens.I recently went on a 10 day trip and went to feed about the same amount hives you have before I left and I found a 4 deep hive that was thriving awesomely just disappear in 5 days since last inspection and every other hive around it were thriving and doing fine. Losing a hive for whatever reason just destroys me because I recognize how much we need them. Hopefully this is 1st and last for you and thanks for sharing your trials and tribulations with all of us. They are challenging and intriguing . I did beekeeping in the 70's helping my dad while he worked night shifts to pay for chemo treatments for my brother. It is incredibly more challenging today with the invasive pests in todays world than back then but it is necessary for all of us and the natural foods we eat. Keep up the great videos and Sharing the ride!
Wow, that sucks. Hopefully it’s not any type of disease that could kill the Balboa hive by recombining the frames or boxes. Good luck 👍 and keep up the good work.
was the hive Queenless? Colonies act less robust without a queen. They are truly weaker with no queen. Maybe it was just robbed out and overwhelmed by the invaders.
Yes, they had a capped queen cell, but not a mated queen. They had a larger population than most of my other splits, but no queen at the time of the split.
No queen, so no commander. If you check through the dead bees you might be able to see roughly two groups, (the attackers and defenders both die) and then use that to work out which of your hives did the robbing. Also worth sending a sample to be tested. Seems unlikely to be foulbrood, but its important to know if you should be burning the dead hive.
Reckless Roges Most likely the culprit hive was the hive it was split from. And a large majority of his hives are Italians most from Balboa line so identifying them would be extremely hard! But we should just blame those darn aggressive Russians :D
Hey, sorry to here about your hive. That looks a lot like poisoning. The only way to know for sure is to have them tested, but an obvious sign of poisoning is all of the die bees have their tongues sticking out. Late season swarms are usual cause by there being a problem in the hive. It could be that top half had an illness or poison in it so they where trying to leave. Late in the season bees have little to no desire to swarm, and the replacement cells were killed off by the queen, so whatever agitation that caused them to want to make a new queen and split was gone after you split them. As others have said it could have been robbing, but you have other weaker hives in the yard, and a hive that size should have easily been able to defend itself with those two small entrances. In my yard I have bees with three seams of bees guarding and fending off hives that are three ten frame deeps. Where I am at the season is coming to a close, and within the next month my bees will stop flying for the most part. If you are looking at a similar time frame I would recommend feeding your bee to help prevent robbing and bulk them up for winter. Cheers.
never split a hive and put the splits so close together. Take the hive with no queen to another bee yard right away. if you leave them right beside each other most of the bees in the queenless hive will fly right back into the hive with the original queen. leaving the hive with no queen defenseless and way to much room to defend. you should've just taken that single brood box full of bees to another yard at least 3km away. it also wouldn't have to deal with all of the other strong hives around it to defend from. then it would've survived and done very well.
This was a case of bad timing. I had made 9 splits before this one in this little bee yard with no issues. This one was too late in the season and I messed up by leaving them too much empty space. My error, I totally take responsibility. I disagree that splits need to be 3km away from the parent hive. That's not my experience and is completely impractical for the majority of beekeepers. I assume the mature bees will fly back to the main hive. If you split into smaller boxes or nucs (like I did all season) it's totally fine. My mistake here was too big of a box and an empty super. I learned my lesson.
Foragers went back to original hive after split, The new split had only nurse bees and when the robbers came in, those nurse bees had nothing to feed on and starved. Way to much space in the hive, which was the cause of the robbing in the first place. A community feeder a few hundred feet away this time of the year would had kept the hive from robbing.
that sucks... make sure you check for diseases too... sometimes they die cause of diseases and ... it can almost get them overnight...( do not take my words for it... just something to consider)
Dude, sorry to hear about this. I have very little experience with this, but I concur with the collective; I think they were robbed and destroyed by your other hives. This wouldn't be CCD because they would just be gone, and the lack of all honey stores shows they were completely obviously plundered. Because some bees are still alive, I am led to believe all of the bees on the bottom board were defenders that didn't survive. Again, sorry about the loss.
Thanks, man. My gut thought was robbing, right off the bat. My awesome commenters confirmed my suspicions. I'm pretty certain that was the issue. This was a teaching moment for sure.
would have been interesting to see if the frame of brood that had bees still taking care of them, would have hatched into a good hive. If there were no mites, or beetles, the worst I think would happen, would be what dead brood there was being extracted and ejected. I'm willing to bet if there were bees taking care of them, then some were still alive.
Watching your videos I've come up with a new term. (Maybe someone else has a similar or the same term/idea.) "*VanHelsing beekeeping*" If you keep looking in a coffin after people are buried, you will find some strange and interesting phenomenon. If you keep disturbing the colony too often, your bees will start to see vampires. Its like helicopter parenting, but for beekeeping. The opposite is, "Bee-havers" that are people that think that they want to get into beekeeping and then never open their hives or do any hive management.
Before you put new bees in I suggest you find an irradiation facility. Your problem is not uncommon. I would suggest that your comb is infected with viruses from the varroa mite. I recently found out at a club meeting that the many viruses associated with varroa can live in the comb for up to and past 15 years. If you re-load those frames with new packages they will be dead next fall due to the virus issue. This is a serious issue for all beekeepers. This winter I trashed most of my frames and am starting with new foundation. I'm also scorching the boxes before putting the new frames in. I'm also building new bottom boards and top covers. Oh, by the way. Those of you who think you can freeze the frames and kill the viruses? You're mistaken. It's found that viruses will survive the cold too.
Why trash the frames and not the boxes? If you scorch boxes you only getting the surface and not getting deeper into the wood. You really need to go higher than 240F and hold it there for 90 minutes or longer to make a kill and that is after the center/middle of the wood reaches the temperature.
@@FloryJohann Toasting the boxes will be enough to kill the viruses. Even AFB spores will be killed doing this. Irradiation is likely the best thing, but I've elected to get rid of my frames. The comb was getting old anyway. One rule I broke was that I didn't rotate three to four year old comb out of the hives.
I do beekepping inSouth Europe and we never keep supers in winter...What is the point of having so much space in winter?...just squize tour colonies to 10 frame box....You see its almost impossible for the bees to keep 34c in the brood if the brood have no roof near...All the heat goes up...Just squize the colonies as much as you can in winter and give them space and frames...
This was not winter. It was in September, right in the middle of our largest flow. I condense the hives down for winter, but this was an attempt to give them space to collect nectar. I made a mistake separating the brood from the honey. I thought I was doing them a favor giving them close space to fill up.
Well...You look like a clever person i am sure you take your lessons...When i was a starter i did so many stupid mistakes i don't even remember...Anyway.I like your chanel...keep the apiarist spirit alive ...Greedings from Greece.
it's always so hard to give advice around beekeeping because you can be successful when you do the "wrong" thing and you can fail doing the "right" thing because there are so many variables. when you made those splits early in the year you got some dissenters saying you should have taken the queen and left the old colony to make new queen cells since they had the strongest amount of resources and nurse bees to make the best queen possible. but you made you split and it worked, right? i've done it the exact same way you did many times. but i think those dissenting comments may have had some merit. and i may try their method in the future. but this case wasn't exactly a "walk-away" split because you already had a queen cell. so the question would more be, should you have taken a small contingent and set them up in a nuc and fed them instead of pulling so many resources away, especially this time of year. this is one of those cases where the time of year may be the variable that makes your technique successful in the spring flow and a failure in the fall when available resources are heading downward. and given the number of hives you now have competing for those resource could be another. and one other thought i had when i see you make these late season splits is, do you really have enough drones to get a well mated queen? do you see drones on many of your hives? i'm in the far south and i don't have any now. i know you reference your last year, late season balboa as a success, but she got replaced this year (am i remembering correctly?). so maybe that was not a real success? maybe she did not get mated well. if that is true, then if being forced to mate a queen late in the season is your only choice, then so be it. but maybe you should not go voluntarily into that choice... when you have only a few hives, it's hard to find the patterns because of those one off failures or successes. it's only after you've done something over and over again that you may be able to see that the odds overall say one technique is more likely to be successful or less so and when.
I think the main mistake I made was adding that extra super in the middle. I should have kept them packed into the deep and the one medium with stores. I should have reduced their entrance immediately until the queen mated. I just thought..."Hey, it's a Balboa hive... It'll be fine." We were in the middle of the flow at the time and I thought they'd need an extra super. I was wrong. I learned.
The hive just gave up due to stress. All of the bees got so listless and weak from the robbing they decided they'd all been "abandoned" and died, much how bees feel when they get discarded by healthy hives. You don't see them fighting it there, they wouldn't here.
can you spend the $ and send these dead bees to a lab and get tested? hopefully whatever it is the other hives dont get hit!!!! is there an option to burn the whole box?
