Worldwide Beekeeping
Beekeeping => Pests and Diseases => Topic started by: ablanton on August 04, 2014, 10:42:12 pm
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Well, I had my first experience with one of those "vanishing" colonies today. I'm not going to call it CCD because I haven't opened this hive in several weeks and don't know what happened or when it happened. All I know is that I went to check it out today and knew something was wrong before I even got to it. The two beside it were quite active. This one was dead quiet. I popped the top and the top box was empty. No brood, honey, bees, nothing. Pulled that box off and the next two were the same, other than a few robber bees and a wax moth. These combs were COMPLETELY empty, other than a little bit of pollen. No dead brood or anything. No dead bees on the bottom board or the ground around the hive. I have no idea what happened. Luckily, I got to it before the wax moths had time to do any damage. I threw all of the combs in the freezer.
This was a 2013 queen. All that I can figure is that she croaked, they failed to make another, and the remaining bees left. Maybe they went into one of the other hives.
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When was the last time you did an inspection and looked for signs of a queen present? Eggs larva and capped brood, to deturman that it was worker brood not brood from possibly a laying worker?
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Could be other things, but sounds like another case of starvation in late July and Aug. It happens a lot in this area. We have ZERO summer flow.
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To be honest, the last time that I opened that particular hive was when I pulled honey in late June or early July. I didn't take notes because I was just pulling honey rather than inspecting; but, I do recall taking a quick peek to make sure there was open brood. I did not look for eggs or a queen because I had a full day ahead pulling & extracting.
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I don't think it was starvation, Iddee. I did not pull 100% of the honey. I left plenty for the bees. I was actually surprised at how much honey is still in the other three that I checked today. I expected them to be getting low on stores by this time, also. I bought 300 lbs of sugar last month in preparation for the dearth. Across 25 hives, I have only used 50 lbs of it and all of that has been on 8 summer splits.
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Bummer Ab! I hope you can find an answer to this :sad:
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Well if that don't beat all! It never occured to me that bees wouldn't have any food over the summer!