Beekeeping > General Beekeeping
Dead Bees and Strange Landing Board Behavior
The15thMember:
--- Quote from: Bakersdozen on May 25, 2022, 11:13:35 am ---Dark and hairless bees can simply be a sign of an older bee like you would see coming out of winter.
--- End quote ---
This isn't a bad thought, since this hive hasn't had new worker brood in 4 weeks now.
I inspected this hive again today. I still found no queen, and I'm pretty sure they have gone laying worker. I saw drones in worker cells, cells with multiple eggs, cells with eggs on the walls, and I even saw a worker with her butt in a cell being harassed by another worker. The landing board behavior seemed like it was lessening recently, although due to life I wasn't up in the apiary the second half of this week until today, so I'm not sure if that trend is continuing consistently. They do have a very developed queen cell, but I'm not sure where they could have gotten a female egg, as there was no other brood in the whole hive, so unless it's one of those REALLY rare parthenogenesis times, I'm thinking it's probably a drone larva.
So here's the question: What's the risk to the other hives if I shake them out? Based on their weird behavior, what's the likelihood that they are sick, and would just spread it to all my other hives? On the other hand, there are still a lot of bees in this hive, it seems a shame to just waste them by euthanizing the whole hive. This hive also has a TON of drones, as I mentioned, and I imagine they are already spreading around to the other hives, and all the other hives are still acting totally normal. Opinions?
LazyBkpr:
If the hive LOOKS otherwise healthy and doesnt smell abnormal... Thats exactly what I would do.... shake them out about 20 yards front of the other hives and remove their box completely.
tedh:
I agree with lazy about looks and smells. Having said that, I've brought a couple similar colonies back from the grave by adding a frame of open brood with eggs each week for awhile. Im not sure of the cost effectivness of that route in terms of stealing frames of brood from other colonies, but I get a get good feeling by bringing a colony back to health. Ted
The15thMember:
Just wanted to close the book on this one for everyone. I shook out the hive today. It really wasn't too bad, the hardest part was just lugging the boxes down the driveway. This hive was 3 mediums, and I just took each box down along with an empty box with an inner cover. I shook and brushed all the bees off the frames, and put the frames in the empty box, then took that to the garage, brought back the inner cover, and repeated using the box I had just emptied. Unsurprisingly, the drones dispersed VERY rapidly, and the workers eventually flew back up to the apiary and started asking to come into the other hives, and it seemed that most were being admitted with little struggle. When I go out to empty my pollen trap after supper, I'll check again and see what the state of affairs seems to be. Next week I'm planning on making two little nucs from the original parent hive to try again to get a daughter queen or two from this mother, since I really like her. Thanks for all the help everyone!
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[*] Previous page
Go to full version