Late swarm or ccd?

[Gypsi]

I lost a late season swarm after last frost date, almost all bees gone, they took very little honey. I put some crawlers in a jar to see if I saw phoris (??) fly larva, I did not, the hive had had a heavy hive load after about 6 frames of late season brood hatched, I'd been in and done powdered sugar.  Not sure if it was or was not CCD, think it was dumb queen wanted to swarm and dumb me saw all those bees in the air when on the way to work and said, no, surely not.  A queen cell did hatch but the new queen got lost and did not return or took off. I distributed honey to existing hives as I haven't seen EFB lately.

There was only 10 day old brood by the time I opened the lid, the left behind might have been robbed by my stronger hives.

Our first freeze was november 7th and drones were kicked out. I discovered bees gone about the end of November, would have to look up date.

[LazyBkpr]

I dont know that hives swarm at all once the drones are toast, so I doubt highly if it was a swarm.. Id say they left for a reason...       if you checked them and mites were low could have been something you cant see like the pesticide build up... how old is the comb?

[ralph]

My assumption of what people call ccd is a queen failure for whatever reason. Then the colony becomes hopelessly queenless. Workers sense a neighboring queenright hive and abandon what they are in to merge with that one.

[iddee]

My vote goes to Ralph. I had two hives on a platform 6 inches apart. I watched the queenless bees walk, not fly, out the door and into the queenright hive. All at one time. There was no brood, so not one bee stayed behind. They looked like a swarm marching into a hive you set down for them.

[ralph]

o dear. I don't wanna win any elections hehe.

Colony Collapse Disorder does have a nice mystical ring to it though. Might even get a newspaper or two sold who knows?  :twisted:

[G3farms]

That sure is a different on Iddee, never heard or saw this. Learn something new all the time  :shock:

[Gypsi]

Queen was old - July 2012 - comb was fresh, I pulled and destroyed all comb in late May due to European Foul Brood. No mites in last inspection but bunch of them in late October, I dusted with powdered sugar, I do use screened bottom boards and after seeing one bee with dwv I put the sticky in, dusted 2 days later and a week after that..

No pesticide spray nearby that I know of, I am surrounded by untended empty lots there is a woods, agriculture immediately nearby is organic.
I did NOT see a clump of bees anywhere that day, but I had to go to work. I did see a queen cup that had obviously hatched a queen 10 days later, but no young queen, and in no way could she have mated. The nearby mature hives could have taken on the bees and I would not have noticed. The nuc didn't benefit but the robberguard would have blocked moveins.

I figured swarmed off but queen failure and some bees living would be a happier answer

[iddee]

It's like a shakeout, g3, but the bees initiate it.

[G3farms]

Kind of like what happened here??  :lol:  :lol:

[ralph]

Hmm the more I think about it.

If a box has no brood and no hope for a queen to be made and no queen. Only workers. That's no different than a pile of bees out in the grass somewhere. There's nothing left there for them to smell when they return or orient to. So once they leave and return. Smelling a queenright hive anywhere in flying range would attract them over what once was home.

That would certainly appear to be a mysterious vanishing act on their part.

[Gypsi]

Might have been old queen took off with a few bees, Texas has these warm after freeze days when it looks safe, and hive 3 murdered the new queen too.  They were trying to rob out hive 1 today.  Going out to put a robber screen on after I eat. Tried earlier, they came out to see me, I went away with my little led flashlight but left the screen the the drill

[Gypsi]

Yesterday when I went out to feed I found a slender (dead) queen on the inside of the robber guard on my nuc. My virgin found her way home in the last day or 2, having searched far and wide for drones, her hive was gone, I know she could not have mated, the drones were long gone when she hatched. I removed her body and put it in my bee bucket.  Nice when a story has an ending.

[G3farms]

stick that queen in a small jar of alcohol and use it for an attractant, her pheromones will wash out into the alcohol.

[Gypsi]

she's all dried out been in the bottom of my tool bucket for 3 weeks, still worth alcohol?