Author Topic: Removed feralhive; they all died within 24 hours  (Read 2465 times)

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omnimirage

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Removed feralhive; they all died within 24 hours
« on: January 24, 2018, 02:09:48 am »
I agreed to move remove a feral beehive that was in a bush, established for a couple months. First time I showed up, someone has squirted the bees with a hose for an hour and one side of the hive was rather wet. Showed up a couple days later, I dismantled the comb, discarded the bits without brood on it and strapped down the bits with brood on frames with rubberbands. The job took longer than I figured, it was a few hours past sunset and thousands of bees was still outside the hive. I tried to encourage them to enter the hive, by putting a lot of lemon grass oil in there, maybe 50 drops, I've learned since that this was a mistake.

So I left, and came back the following day. I made another mistake because I didn't provide shade from the sun, it's summer here in Australia and the hive probably got quite hot. When I showed up the following evening, there was less than a thousand bees in the hive, the large majority of them swarmed to a tree just 10-15 meters away. I parked my car underneath, put a cabinet on top, placed the hive on top of the cabinet and scooped, and shacked the bees into the hive. I then drove them to the new site and dropped them off.

I returned eight days later. The owner of the property told me that he went out the back about 20 hours after I dropped off the bees, and there were many thousands of dead bees outside the hives. The two hives sharing the stand didn't seem to have lost any bees, so it seems they were mostly all from the swarm that I captured.

The hive had some sugar ants, moths, wasps, wax moth and a small, green/brown beetle with a little black dot roaming about inside, about the size of a small hive beetle(tried to take a photo of it but it hid with some comb and I didn't see it again). There was a number of baby bees that tried to hatch from brood comb, failed and died. There was maybe a few hundred bees left. I saw some eggs in one section of comb, but I didn't see a queen.

Here's some photos:

https://imgur.com/a/Fywu7

I basically took a photo of every part of the hive, some frames got photos at different angles.

I wasn't sure what to do. I thought about leaving them there, but figured the chances of them surviving was less than 1%. I thought about merging them with another hive, but considering how many actual bees were here, and I figured there was a possibility that they had some disease or pest, I didn't think it was worth it, so I just brought them back home with me.

What potential reasons are there for the bees dying? What could have caused the brood to be unable to hatch? What would have you guys done differently? Could have that little green/brown bug be some sort of pest that contributed to their decline, or was it likely just a common bug? Was the eggs that were laid, likely from before the hive was moved?

Offline apisbees

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Re: Removed feralhive; they all died within 24 hours
« Reply #1 on: January 24, 2018, 01:33:39 pm »
First remove the plastic foundation as the bees do not have access to both sides of the comb and only 1/2 the bees would be able to emerge and the ones on the blocked side would die and rot in the cells. The number of bees in the hive is no where near the swarm that was on the tree. I would suspect that due top most the bees not being put on the brood soon enough the few bees could not care for it and a lot of the brood was dead when you finally got the bees into the box. By that time with most of the brood in poor survivable condition the bees decided to leave and find a new hive location. We learn form our failures, so keep every thing in mind for when presented with the next one.
For me in that location and where the bees where located I with the owners permission would have cut the branches with hand cutters and placed the hive in a card board box and moved it to the new hive location and let them get oriented to their new location. Then after a few days I would have tackled the removal and set the hive up where the wild nest had been.
Honey Judge, Beekeeping Display Coordinator, Armstrong Fair and Rodeo.

omnimirage

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Re: Removed feralhive; they all died within 24 hours
« Reply #2 on: January 24, 2018, 07:39:21 pm »
Removing the foundation makes a lot of sense. Interesting, so the bees in the tree likely abandoned the hive and the brood was likely dead before I even put them back in the box huh.

So leave the cardboard box open for them to freely fly? I'm a bit confused by what you're suggesting, as you say to move the bees to the new hive location, which is away from where the cutout was done, but then you say to set the hive up where the wild nest had been. Oh, do you mean set up the hive where the cardboard box is, at the new site?

Some of the baby bees tried to hatch from comb when I arrived at the site. They were mostly struggling, and I helped a few. Do they usually need nurse bees to help them hatch? I noticed that the ones that did hatch, were a lighter colour. Is that normal? Do they darken as they mature?

I took some photos, measuring the different sizes of the baby bee hatchlings that got stuck and died. I found one bee in the hive that was very dark. I've never seen a bee so dark coloured before. What's up with that?

https://imgur.com/a/NmVXz

Offline rober

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Re: Removed feralhive; they all died within 24 hours
« Reply #3 on: January 25, 2018, 10:05:25 am »
when I do a cut out, or open a fallen tree , or in a case like this where the bees have drawn comb in the open I would remove as many bees as possible with my bee vacuum. I'd then do as apis said cut the branches put the comb & bees in a box at their new location & let them settle in. I usually leave cutouts or swarms locked down for 2-3 days. I would also put a frame with some brood in a nuc & leave that at the original location. stragglers & foragers almost always return & gather in or on the box. i then return at dusk with a trash bag large enough to hold the nuc in case the bees are on the outside & bring them to the new location. after that I install them in a hive. when putting wild comb in frames i cut it to fit a frame getting it as full as possible.

omnimirage

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Re: Removed feralhive; they all died within 24 hours
« Reply #4 on: January 25, 2018, 08:43:50 pm »
Some great information particularly using a garbage bag to wrap around the nuc to get all the ones outside it. During this job I had to scoop out quite a number of bees from my car and there were still a couple hundred left.

I think I might have to build myself a bee vacuum!

How many stragglers show up in the nuc when you leave? I just try to keep driving down to a minimal considering how absurdly expensive petrol is. Do you dismantle a bit of the hive to find some brood to leave in a nuc?