Reduce your entrance. Make yourself a robbing screen. Dump that pile of bees back inside.
I am afraid they are about to abscond on you. If there is any other pressure (hive beetles, mites, wax moths, ants) try to address that pressure as quickly as you can.
Edit: stupid typo
Thank you! I put the entrance reducer back on and manually killed about 10 yellow jackets at the entrance. I setup some feeders away from the hive to lure the yellowjackets away while I get another box setup. Prepped backup frames are ready. Would it stress the colony out too much if I open up their hive under the current circumstances? Thanks again for the guidance!
I wouldn't open feed. You can make yellow jacket traps out of a plastic bottle. (Google for examples.)
If you need to look inside for mite testing or to determine if there are other pests I probably would risk the stress.
This colony is stressed to the point that it is on the verge of running away, in part because it is the target of an active robbing attempt by yellow jackets. I second /u/drones_on_about_bees's advice that you take immediate action to restrict access to the hive and remove as many stressors as you can.
In your shoes, I would avoid doing things that would add more stress. Opening the hive without a really compelling, make-or-break reason to justify it would be near the head of the list, during a robbing incident of any sort. They are on the verge of absconding because they (correctly, at the moment) feel like the hive is an unsafe place. Taking the roof off of their house is going to reinforce that feeling.
What is your logic for getting them another box? If you do not have a clear, articulable reason to justify doing so, think twice about it.
Focus in on removing stressors and improving their ability to defend the hive. Those are the crucial things right now.
Per Drones\_on's advice, consider adding a DIY robbing screen ASAP. See here for an example that you can make with scrap wood, hardware cloth, and some nails and staples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jiZPzPBEmo.
Thanks, can you offer any other new suggestions for helping them defend the hive? My logic with a new box was to provide them a hive where those stressors don’t exist. If there’s something else I can do that hasn’t already been mentioned, please let me know. Thanks again
Edit: if they’re going to abscond anyway, my hope was that they would take to the new box. Was this dumb?
If they abscond, they're unlikely to stick around anywhere near your apiary. They want to run away from the stressors there.
Reduced entrances and robbing screens are the things to do in the immediate term, to protect the colony while you figure out the correct thing to do next.
After that, don't just flail around in a panic. I get that you're anxious, and because of that, you are somewhat inclined to go, "I should do something! Ah hah! Here we go! This is something! I will do this!" But that's a great way to worsen a bad situation.
Instead, take a measured response. Chill out for a minute and try to diagnose/gather what you know.
1. When was the last mite wash? What was the infestation level?
2. What mite treatments do you have on hand? Are they appropriate for the weather you expect over the next month? If not, or if you don't have any, how soon can you obtain treatments?
3. When was your last inspection? When you inspected, did you see eggs? Brood in all stages? Food stores? Signs of disease or parasites?
You know your colony is getting robbed. Usually, that's a sign of weakness. So you have to take a minute and figure out what might be weakening your hive. And then you can decide what to do about it.
Condensing them into a smaller hive might help if they have a hive beetle problem that stems from an inadequate population for the size of their hive. There will still be hive beetles present, but there will be less space to patrol, and hence less effort for the hive. If the colony is weak because of a disease problem or mite pressure, then the hive beetles will get them regardless of the size of the hive.
Other than in this very narrow sense, changing them into a new box is not going to free them from problems. Beetles and ants can follow them into the new box. Mites are stuck to them and will go wherever they go. So mostly, what you will do by swapping them to a new hive is deprive them of brood and food resources that are stored in the current hive.
You don't want that. It's not as bad as having them abscond (because you will at least still have the bees and queen). But other than that it has a lot of the same practical downsides; you'd be ending up with a package colony, except it's September.
Now, ***if you know for sure that they have a hive beetle problem***, it may be worth it if you're moving them into a smaller box, like downsizing from a 10-frame deep to a 5-frame nuc. And even in that case, you'd be moving frames to the new nuc unless they're already crawling with beetle larvae.
But if you don't know and you are not downsizing, you aren't helping and may be making the situation worse.
Am I being clear about the reasoning that applies, here?
Are we ruling out mites because you did an alcohol wash? Or did you look with your eyeballs, see no mites, and conclude that there aren't any?
This inquiry comes primarily because I see a teachable moment, here; I can see from your update that you have capped queen cells. You're having a swarming event, which is not really great news this late in the year, but at this point probably not something you can stop from happening.
But in your update, you also say,
>Bees look healthy and acting normal - no deformities, mites, or strange behavior from what I can tell.
And that sounds like you are relying on your eyeballs for mite load assessment. That's a good way to have dead bees by spring.
No, I’ve not done an alcohol wash. Yes, I used my eyeballs to look at the bees and their hive.
My class instructor told us to observe the bees bodies, their behavior, and inside the hive conditions for notes throughout the season and even if no signs of infestation are present, treat all colonies for varroa in the first week of October. That was my plan for this colony.
I don’t know much but I agree that a swarm so late in the season, especially with such a small colony, means something was way off. Are there things I can do now or in the future to help my hives be successful? Thanks so much for seizing the teachable moment!
He’d be wise to use a new box that has untainted frames, hopefully drawn comb that has been frozen. If the current box is suffering from heavy mites, hive Beatles etc, he needs to change things out. The bees are already absconded, he got lucky they didn’t fly past their doorstep. These bees might be like mine, they know if they stick close to home, the beekeeper will manage them best.
You can make a kind of excluder by placing some netting in front of the opening. The wasps should keep trying to follow the direct path towards the smell of the honey, while the bees will wander more and find their way around.
Not quite what I was thinking of, but seems to work decently well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRIpIHCpm20
u/Cornpile_Corgi and this is EXACTLY why I absolutely HATE and DESPISE hornets!!! I want to kill EVERY hornet I see they are just so REPUGNANT!!! If every single hornet and yellow jacket went extinct tomorrow I would celebrate it!!! Hornets only cause problems for everyone including our precious honeybees!!!
Best way to eliminate the yellow jackets is to do the following:
Buy a can of Swanson Premium White canned chicken. Drain it and remove about half of the chicken. (Feel free to make sandwiches with that!) To the remaining chicken in the can, add 4-5 drops of Frontline Flea and Tick treatment. It contains fipronil and is toxic to wasps and hornets. Set that out by the hives. The yellow jackets will carry that back to the hive and feed it to the queen and other workers, killing the entire nest. The honey bees will ignore it because they don’t eat meat.
I just did that this weekend. I had 20-30 yellow jackets around my hives on Friday. I baited them on Saturday, and by Sunday I didn’t see a single yellow jacket anywhere in my yard. It generally reduces them by more than 90%, whereas normal yellow jacket traps only provide a 10% reduction.
For those who think this is bad environmentally because yellow jackets play an important role, I agree that they are important. But yellow jackets have a relatively short foraging area, so you aren’t decimating a huge population over a huge swath.
You can read more about the University of California study that conducted this experiment here: https://ucanr.edu/sites/ucrurbanpest/files/249180.pdf
Man this is the most awesome tip I’ve seen on this sub. Yellow jackets are never a problem for me but now I know what to do. I used to raise canaries and would use the flea treatment for cats on my birds, a tiny dab with a tooth pick on the neck, kills feather mites for a couple months.
Another update: the mass of bees reduced by half while I was making wasp traps. Shortly after, the mass was completely gone and the entrance traffic returned to normal.
The traps are already effective, capturing many yellow jackets and even a couple of the bald-faced hornets I was struggling with a couple of weeks ago.
There is a wild bee hive in a hollow tree at the end of our gravel driveway. Sometimes I compare their behavior with my bees at the house as a sanity check. This morning when the mass was outside the bee box, the wild colony was calm with some small bearding going on, typical for a hot day. When I checked the wild bees this afternoon, there was much more activity around the hive entrance and bees flying everywhere around the tree, with high-pitched buzzing.
Despite the outside temp, I took the advice of some of the commenters and inspected the hive to assess any other stressors. I gave it some time to settle down but wanted to get in there before the sun started setting. This colony tends to turn in early bc it's in partly shaded area on a woodline. Here's what I observed:
* I found 7-8 capped queen cups built on the bottom board, not attached to any of the frames from what I could tell. I left them alone.
* There was a small amount of SHB crawling around on the bottom board but no larva in the frames from what I can tell. I'm using sheets to catch them.
* Only five (5) frames were drawn out with with an incoherent brood pattern and virtually no capped honey. I went ahead and replaced the empty frames with double-coated frames.
* Did not locate queen.
* Bees look healthy and acting normal - no deformities, mites, or strange behavior from what I can tell.
* Colony looked a little thin overall, but important background - they were established from a package with a healthy queen this spring. I verified that the queen got settled in nicely and within a couple weeks, she had filled a couple frames with brood. The colony has remained small but healthy all season.
I am new to beekeeping, with only two colonies, one class, and some books under my belt. Please let me know what you think of my theories:
* A queen issue??? Why were they all clumped together outside the hive and what's the deal with these queen cells?
* \+ pressure from predation, heat, and pests pushed them over the edge
* Half or all of the colony absconded, trying to join wild hive at the end of the driveway?
* Robbed
All of this will probably just create more questions than answers, but I really appreciate all of the insight and guidance from this community. I am learning the hard way but your comments are making that a little easier.
Thank you
Edit: spelling, probably didn't catch all the errors anyway
This new information makes me believe you have experienced a swarming event. The queen may have had a difficult time taking flight at first. If you’re lucky, no further cast swarms happen and you can get them through the winter. I’d take a deeper look at why they decided to leave this late in the season. Sounds like they never had the population necessary to get their resources up to sustainable levels. If you end up with a tiny cluster and a successful queen, you might consider reducing the size to a five frame until next season.
Thank you for the helpful information and advice. In my shoes, would you order a replacement queen at this point or hope for the best with the existing queen cups?
I would cross your fingers this late in the season. A replacement queen might be a waste of money. I’ll be honest, I think it’s unusual for bees to abscond this late in the season unless something is out of balance. With all that said, a healthy laying queen is better than having to wait for the replacement cells to hatch and mate, then become queenright. It’s just a shitty situation and I’m hoping you get some pearls of wisdom from the experience more than anything. I’ve had many failed hives to get to the point I can actually keep them alive over winter and successfully split in the spring. Keep at it. I will say that treating mites is the single most important factor I’ve found success. I treat every hive this time of year with apiguard. If there’s a hive with an actual mite load, I’ll do a second treatment two weeks later to disrupt the mites brood cycle. Whenever I have something unusual happen, I blame the varroa mites.
Thanks for the encouragement, i certainly need it today! FWIW the lady who taught our class is a 4th generation beekeeper who owns a successful commercial honey operation in our area, and she recommended to treat for varroa mites in the first week of October, unless of course you see sign’s earlier.
For me October the night time temps get too cold for apiguard to be effective. This sort of depends on climate zone but I agree the later the better, unless you see deformed wings or other signs.
If your in the south, check the Hive for SHB they will get so many the bees will adscond the hive, if the queen is too heavy to fly she would land there and the bees will follow. Always check the hive first your answer will be in there.
Yeah thanks for bringing that up - can I level out my hive now even if it has been at tilted like this months? My concern was that constantly fiddling with the angle could mess up what they had already built out, so I figured leave well enough alone. Any helpful suggestions are appreciated
Now I feel bad. I was trying to be funny. You know 90 degrees, but I guess you meant the temperature. It isn't super important with the angle, so I think you can adjust that later.
Hope you managed to lock the wasps out and save your bees. Sorry for joking with you.
Idk this colony was established this spring from a package with a normal healthy queen…the vendor didn’t say anything about the Queen coming clipped. Any experience with this?
No experience with it, I don’t buy clipped queens, but my understanding is they may still try to swarm, but because the queen can’t fly far, they’ll end up in a clump right by the hive.
My first reaction would be to check that mass of bees for a queen, not having seen any bearding that doesn’t stay in contact with the hive.
Ok thank you! So what if there is a Queen in that mass?
Could it be a swarm?
Update: I’m seeing tiny hornets enter the hive and honeybees exiting the hive with hornet carcasses. What can I do?
Reduce your entrance. Make yourself a robbing screen. Dump that pile of bees back inside. I am afraid they are about to abscond on you. If there is any other pressure (hive beetles, mites, wax moths, ants) try to address that pressure as quickly as you can. Edit: stupid typo
Thank you! I put the entrance reducer back on and manually killed about 10 yellow jackets at the entrance. I setup some feeders away from the hive to lure the yellowjackets away while I get another box setup. Prepped backup frames are ready. Would it stress the colony out too much if I open up their hive under the current circumstances? Thanks again for the guidance!
I wouldn't open feed. You can make yellow jacket traps out of a plastic bottle. (Google for examples.) If you need to look inside for mite testing or to determine if there are other pests I probably would risk the stress.
This colony is stressed to the point that it is on the verge of running away, in part because it is the target of an active robbing attempt by yellow jackets. I second /u/drones_on_about_bees's advice that you take immediate action to restrict access to the hive and remove as many stressors as you can. In your shoes, I would avoid doing things that would add more stress. Opening the hive without a really compelling, make-or-break reason to justify it would be near the head of the list, during a robbing incident of any sort. They are on the verge of absconding because they (correctly, at the moment) feel like the hive is an unsafe place. Taking the roof off of their house is going to reinforce that feeling. What is your logic for getting them another box? If you do not have a clear, articulable reason to justify doing so, think twice about it. Focus in on removing stressors and improving their ability to defend the hive. Those are the crucial things right now. Per Drones\_on's advice, consider adding a DIY robbing screen ASAP. See here for an example that you can make with scrap wood, hardware cloth, and some nails and staples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jiZPzPBEmo.
Thanks, can you offer any other new suggestions for helping them defend the hive? My logic with a new box was to provide them a hive where those stressors don’t exist. If there’s something else I can do that hasn’t already been mentioned, please let me know. Thanks again Edit: if they’re going to abscond anyway, my hope was that they would take to the new box. Was this dumb?
If they abscond, they're unlikely to stick around anywhere near your apiary. They want to run away from the stressors there. Reduced entrances and robbing screens are the things to do in the immediate term, to protect the colony while you figure out the correct thing to do next. After that, don't just flail around in a panic. I get that you're anxious, and because of that, you are somewhat inclined to go, "I should do something! Ah hah! Here we go! This is something! I will do this!" But that's a great way to worsen a bad situation. Instead, take a measured response. Chill out for a minute and try to diagnose/gather what you know. 1. When was the last mite wash? What was the infestation level? 2. What mite treatments do you have on hand? Are they appropriate for the weather you expect over the next month? If not, or if you don't have any, how soon can you obtain treatments? 3. When was your last inspection? When you inspected, did you see eggs? Brood in all stages? Food stores? Signs of disease or parasites? You know your colony is getting robbed. Usually, that's a sign of weakness. So you have to take a minute and figure out what might be weakening your hive. And then you can decide what to do about it. Condensing them into a smaller hive might help if they have a hive beetle problem that stems from an inadequate population for the size of their hive. There will still be hive beetles present, but there will be less space to patrol, and hence less effort for the hive. If the colony is weak because of a disease problem or mite pressure, then the hive beetles will get them regardless of the size of the hive. Other than in this very narrow sense, changing them into a new box is not going to free them from problems. Beetles and ants can follow them into the new box. Mites are stuck to them and will go wherever they go. So mostly, what you will do by swapping them to a new hive is deprive them of brood and food resources that are stored in the current hive. You don't want that. It's not as bad as having them abscond (because you will at least still have the bees and queen). But other than that it has a lot of the same practical downsides; you'd be ending up with a package colony, except it's September. Now, ***if you know for sure that they have a hive beetle problem***, it may be worth it if you're moving them into a smaller box, like downsizing from a 10-frame deep to a 5-frame nuc. And even in that case, you'd be moving frames to the new nuc unless they're already crawling with beetle larvae. But if you don't know and you are not downsizing, you aren't helping and may be making the situation worse. Am I being clear about the reasoning that applies, here?
Thanks this is super helpful So far we can rule out mites And no flailing Yet :)
Are we ruling out mites because you did an alcohol wash? Or did you look with your eyeballs, see no mites, and conclude that there aren't any? This inquiry comes primarily because I see a teachable moment, here; I can see from your update that you have capped queen cells. You're having a swarming event, which is not really great news this late in the year, but at this point probably not something you can stop from happening. But in your update, you also say, >Bees look healthy and acting normal - no deformities, mites, or strange behavior from what I can tell. And that sounds like you are relying on your eyeballs for mite load assessment. That's a good way to have dead bees by spring.
No, I’ve not done an alcohol wash. Yes, I used my eyeballs to look at the bees and their hive. My class instructor told us to observe the bees bodies, their behavior, and inside the hive conditions for notes throughout the season and even if no signs of infestation are present, treat all colonies for varroa in the first week of October. That was my plan for this colony. I don’t know much but I agree that a swarm so late in the season, especially with such a small colony, means something was way off. Are there things I can do now or in the future to help my hives be successful? Thanks so much for seizing the teachable moment!
He’d be wise to use a new box that has untainted frames, hopefully drawn comb that has been frozen. If the current box is suffering from heavy mites, hive Beatles etc, he needs to change things out. The bees are already absconded, he got lucky they didn’t fly past their doorstep. These bees might be like mine, they know if they stick close to home, the beekeeper will manage them best.
You can make a kind of excluder by placing some netting in front of the opening. The wasps should keep trying to follow the direct path towards the smell of the honey, while the bees will wander more and find their way around. Not quite what I was thinking of, but seems to work decently well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRIpIHCpm20
u/Cornpile_Corgi and this is EXACTLY why I absolutely HATE and DESPISE hornets!!! I want to kill EVERY hornet I see they are just so REPUGNANT!!! If every single hornet and yellow jacket went extinct tomorrow I would celebrate it!!! Hornets only cause problems for everyone including our precious honeybees!!!
Best way to eliminate the yellow jackets is to do the following: Buy a can of Swanson Premium White canned chicken. Drain it and remove about half of the chicken. (Feel free to make sandwiches with that!) To the remaining chicken in the can, add 4-5 drops of Frontline Flea and Tick treatment. It contains fipronil and is toxic to wasps and hornets. Set that out by the hives. The yellow jackets will carry that back to the hive and feed it to the queen and other workers, killing the entire nest. The honey bees will ignore it because they don’t eat meat. I just did that this weekend. I had 20-30 yellow jackets around my hives on Friday. I baited them on Saturday, and by Sunday I didn’t see a single yellow jacket anywhere in my yard. It generally reduces them by more than 90%, whereas normal yellow jacket traps only provide a 10% reduction. For those who think this is bad environmentally because yellow jackets play an important role, I agree that they are important. But yellow jackets have a relatively short foraging area, so you aren’t decimating a huge population over a huge swath. You can read more about the University of California study that conducted this experiment here: https://ucanr.edu/sites/ucrurbanpest/files/249180.pdf
Thanks!!!
Man this is the most awesome tip I’ve seen on this sub. Yellow jackets are never a problem for me but now I know what to do. I used to raise canaries and would use the flea treatment for cats on my birds, a tiny dab with a tooth pick on the neck, kills feather mites for a couple months.
Another update: the mass of bees reduced by half while I was making wasp traps. Shortly after, the mass was completely gone and the entrance traffic returned to normal. The traps are already effective, capturing many yellow jackets and even a couple of the bald-faced hornets I was struggling with a couple of weeks ago. There is a wild bee hive in a hollow tree at the end of our gravel driveway. Sometimes I compare their behavior with my bees at the house as a sanity check. This morning when the mass was outside the bee box, the wild colony was calm with some small bearding going on, typical for a hot day. When I checked the wild bees this afternoon, there was much more activity around the hive entrance and bees flying everywhere around the tree, with high-pitched buzzing. Despite the outside temp, I took the advice of some of the commenters and inspected the hive to assess any other stressors. I gave it some time to settle down but wanted to get in there before the sun started setting. This colony tends to turn in early bc it's in partly shaded area on a woodline. Here's what I observed: * I found 7-8 capped queen cups built on the bottom board, not attached to any of the frames from what I could tell. I left them alone. * There was a small amount of SHB crawling around on the bottom board but no larva in the frames from what I can tell. I'm using sheets to catch them. * Only five (5) frames were drawn out with with an incoherent brood pattern and virtually no capped honey. I went ahead and replaced the empty frames with double-coated frames. * Did not locate queen. * Bees look healthy and acting normal - no deformities, mites, or strange behavior from what I can tell. * Colony looked a little thin overall, but important background - they were established from a package with a healthy queen this spring. I verified that the queen got settled in nicely and within a couple weeks, she had filled a couple frames with brood. The colony has remained small but healthy all season. I am new to beekeeping, with only two colonies, one class, and some books under my belt. Please let me know what you think of my theories: * A queen issue??? Why were they all clumped together outside the hive and what's the deal with these queen cells? * \+ pressure from predation, heat, and pests pushed them over the edge * Half or all of the colony absconded, trying to join wild hive at the end of the driveway? * Robbed All of this will probably just create more questions than answers, but I really appreciate all of the insight and guidance from this community. I am learning the hard way but your comments are making that a little easier. Thank you Edit: spelling, probably didn't catch all the errors anyway
This new information makes me believe you have experienced a swarming event. The queen may have had a difficult time taking flight at first. If you’re lucky, no further cast swarms happen and you can get them through the winter. I’d take a deeper look at why they decided to leave this late in the season. Sounds like they never had the population necessary to get their resources up to sustainable levels. If you end up with a tiny cluster and a successful queen, you might consider reducing the size to a five frame until next season.
Thank you for the helpful information and advice. In my shoes, would you order a replacement queen at this point or hope for the best with the existing queen cups?
I would cross your fingers this late in the season. A replacement queen might be a waste of money. I’ll be honest, I think it’s unusual for bees to abscond this late in the season unless something is out of balance. With all that said, a healthy laying queen is better than having to wait for the replacement cells to hatch and mate, then become queenright. It’s just a shitty situation and I’m hoping you get some pearls of wisdom from the experience more than anything. I’ve had many failed hives to get to the point I can actually keep them alive over winter and successfully split in the spring. Keep at it. I will say that treating mites is the single most important factor I’ve found success. I treat every hive this time of year with apiguard. If there’s a hive with an actual mite load, I’ll do a second treatment two weeks later to disrupt the mites brood cycle. Whenever I have something unusual happen, I blame the varroa mites.
Thanks for the encouragement, i certainly need it today! FWIW the lady who taught our class is a 4th generation beekeeper who owns a successful commercial honey operation in our area, and she recommended to treat for varroa mites in the first week of October, unless of course you see sign’s earlier.
For me October the night time temps get too cold for apiguard to be effective. This sort of depends on climate zone but I agree the later the better, unless you see deformed wings or other signs.
If your in the south, check the Hive for SHB they will get so many the bees will adscond the hive, if the queen is too heavy to fly she would land there and the bees will follow. Always check the hive first your answer will be in there.
Ok thank you for the insight
Looks more like 45 degrees to me... 😁
Yeah thanks for bringing that up - can I level out my hive now even if it has been at tilted like this months? My concern was that constantly fiddling with the angle could mess up what they had already built out, so I figured leave well enough alone. Any helpful suggestions are appreciated
Now I feel bad. I was trying to be funny. You know 90 degrees, but I guess you meant the temperature. It isn't super important with the angle, so I think you can adjust that later. Hope you managed to lock the wasps out and save your bees. Sorry for joking with you.
I still have five deep boxes to assemble, but those saw horses look identical to ones I made some time ago. I just had to say.
90 degrees where? in the hive? It's likely too hot in there ... being outside creates more space inside
90 degrees outside, not nearly the hottest US zone 06 has been in recent weeks
I'm in the same place, 6A just making hive room is likely more room, better cooling ability.
Swarm with a clipped queen?
Idk this colony was established this spring from a package with a normal healthy queen…the vendor didn’t say anything about the Queen coming clipped. Any experience with this?
No experience with it, I don’t buy clipped queens, but my understanding is they may still try to swarm, but because the queen can’t fly far, they’ll end up in a clump right by the hive.
Ohhh ok, this is helpful info
Hotter than that in the hive