Lessons learned from hives lost!

[Woody Roberts]

As I said in an another thread I believe I've learned more from hives I've lost than from hives that lived.
As many hives as I have lost I should be a lot smarter than I am. Alas I'm not!

I started with one queen less deep box with no food in it. Of course I didn't know that when I bought it. The Russian kid who barely spoke English said it had a queen. He did say I would need to feed.

Any way they built a very nice queen and all could have been well but for one problem. ME. I had read several books before and I found bees very interesting and I craved knowledge. I still do.

I went thru these bees so much the guys at work said if you looked up bee pest in the dictionary it would have my picture.

They came thru the winter just fine and started building up just like young overwintered queens do. Anxious to expand I pulled a nuc too early. By mistake at the time I put the queen in the nuc with two frames of bees.
I had read that two frames of bees would build a queen from any egg the right age.

The bees in the original hive built a nice queen but it was too early for her to get mated right. She did mate though and started laying. Meanwhile her workers drew and filled a deep and a medium.

I had resigned myself to only checking these bees every few days no matter how much I wanted to.
One day I noticed there was no worker brood capped. Plenty of capped drone brood. I saw the queen and lots of eggs. The next week I had a queen, eggs, drone brood but no worker brood. The following week it was the same. Buy this time I was suspecting a drone laying queen so I ordered a queen. She came a week later and I had her installed in a few days. By this time it had been nearly 5 weeks since I saw capped worker brood.

I took the super of honey but left the deep which was as full as a deep can get.
The population was really dwindling but there were enough bees I felt. But this queen would just not build up.
Since there were about 4 frames of bees in a two deep hive the hive beetles moved in and literally destroyed it. I hadent  been concerned about SHB because all the books I had read said they weren't in MO. yet.

The nuc I started with the original queen built up really slow and I learned a queen can only lay as many eggs as she has bees to care for them and two frames is a slow go.

Now I know what I'm looking for when I open a hive and the first sign that something isn't right  I act upon it. I don't wait and see.

More to come later. Let's hear some of your learning experiences.

[Perry]

Believe it or not Woody, I have an answer for your problem. I too, went through my first hives more than perhaps was necessary, but then I don't really believe that's altogether bad, as that is how we learn.
Now, for the answer to your problem.........
are you ready...................
Get more hives!
Really quite simple. If you love going through hives, say, at least every 2 or 3 days, get yourself about 7 hives. That should work out just about right. Every few days, open one up, get it out of your system.
I'm not kidding. This can be an addictive hobby, and I'm sure if you asked, there are plenty on here who will confess to going through their hives when it probably really wasn't necessary. 

[Jen]

How long have the bees been keeping you Woody? I'm into my fourth season.

[Jen]

Perry "'Get more hives!""

Brilliant!

[Woody Roberts]

Perry, that's exactly what I did.
Jen, I lose track of time but I think it's been five years. I'm still a newbie.

That one hive is the only bees I've ever bought. Over the time of that first story I had started a couple more nucs. Weakening my already weak bees even more. Some time along here a friend gave me six frames of bees. They built me an excellent queen and I had a swarm move into an empty hive I had.

The nuc I mistakenly put the queen in I gave to my neighbor. I take care of them for him and despite lots of setbacks their doing good.

I still hadn't learned that two frames of bees won't build you a good queen and over the next year or so I continued to lose most of the hives I built.
After losing all my bees except the hive from my friend I started putting 2 and 2 together. I then started playing with 3 , 4 and 5 frame nucs. I built nucs early and I built nucs late. A good many didn't make it but I now have some pretty strong opinions on how to build a succesful hive.
I'm still learning and I have a long way to go.

My point in this thread is that I don't believe you should cry over spilt honey. You should try to learn from it.
How could you learn if everything went right.

[Jen]

And Woody? What is it that kept you going? I have a similar story of collateral damage, defeats, and disease. Going into my fourth season.

[Woody Roberts]

Keep going. Not a problem. I find bees quite fascinating. I could theoretically retire in 7 years and while I don't intend to make a living from bees I think they would be a project that paid a little. Tobacco and minnow money so to speak.

I want to have 50 hives in 7 yrs. very doable. But mainly I want to know how to keep bees. I mean really know!

[Jen]

I like what I'm hearing from you. It's the most fascinating hobby I've ever had. I have no intention, at least at the moment, of making any kind of income from the bees. I just love having them near me.

I lost my first hive that winter from starvation. I had no idea they would starve, that you have to help them along with food... especially a small new hive. When we found them early the following spring, thier heads all buried in the combs, dead, husband looked at me with a question mark, and I said "Okay, I'll just get some more." Didn't occur to me to Not have bees from then on.

[Woody Roberts]

I've been lucky that I've never had any starve. I think mostly because I started with Russians who mated with the locals. To my knowledge there are no other beeks within flying distance but there are a couple bee trees nearby.

My bees winter with a pretty small cluster and require very little feed until Feb. once buildup starts I have to keep an eye on them.

My son in law has Itialians and they seem to be harder to winter. They also seem to put on more honey than mine.

I've seen a hive in a single deep go into winter with 2 frames of honey plus what was on the brood frames. In Feb while it was still cold I dropped by and picked the box up. I guessed the weight at 15 lbs maybe less. I popped the top long enough to confirm there were still bees. There was so I ran home and mixed 10 lb of sugar with just enough water to make it clump. With a spatula I smeared it on the top bars over the entire hive. Dropped some on the bottom board and put the rest on the inner cover.

When necter started coming in there was about a teacup left. This was my closest call to date.
This is the hive at my neighbors from the nuc in the first story. I was building a new house in the fall and just didn't get them fed like I should have before cold weather set in.

Earlier that spring a storm blew the lid of and they took a lot of cold rain. Left about a double handful of bees and the queen. They built up by fall but missed the main flow.

They are survivers. We took two supers off them this year and left one on.
They've been there 3 or 4 years now and I've only known about one supersedure. In the spring I'll put the queen in a nuc and try to rob a few queen cells for my mating nuc.

[Woody Roberts]

When I first started when I saw a hive was in trouble I felt like a failure. I would do everything I knew to get them to survive. I'm not sure if it's the queen or the bees but some hives seem bound and determined to die.
I would keep adding brood until they dwindled away.

Not any more. If everything don't look right I combine them or shake them out and let them go in some other hive. I'll pull a couple frames from 3 or so strong hives and put them in their equipment. I'll have eggs in 30 days. I never let one just die anymore.

Awhile back someone asked how many hives I had. It depends on which day. I started last spring with 3 and had 8 at one time. By midsummer I had one queen right hive. I went into fall with seven and last warm day still had all 7.

I think the Chinese have a saying. From one to a hundred and from a hundred to one. Meaning you can build a hundred from one and lose them even easer.

Like all Gods creatures their born looking for a place to die.

[tecumseh]

a woody snip..
As I said in an another thread I believe I've learned more from hives I've lost than from hives that lived.
As many hives as I have lost I should be a lot smarter than I am. Alas I'm not!

tecumseh...
well have reading this thread from top to bottom and paying special attention to your responses I would argue that yes you have learned quite a lot in the process.  for many of us our largest learning experiences often starts with failure.... of course if failure knocks you down and you never get up you will likely learn little < actually for me this capacity to pick yourself up after the world knocks you down is the true essence of character.

I know this is true for me and via conversation it is also likely true of folks like Iddee and Brooks... a lot of our wagging fingers is really about bee keeping failure we have experience directly and we really see no reason you need go down the same path and make the same exact mistake.

[Bakersdozen]

Tecumseh- Those are kind words of encouragement.

Woody- Like Tecumseh said so much more eloquently than I, keep getting back up on that horse! and you will learn.  I admit, in most things I am a slow learner.  My first several years were rocky as well.   A fellow beekeeper even commented to me that she wasn't sure I would be back to another bee club meeting after a particularly bad year.  I had mismanaged my hives so poorly that it was an annual event to start over.  After 5 years, I lack confidence, but understand what I am doing and why a little better. 
It takes time for the bees to teach you about their world.

[Perry]

 
It takes time for the bees to teach you about their world.

  Well spoken.

[Woody Roberts]

It takes time for the bees to teach you about their world


Well spoken indeed!

I'm getting a lot of kind words and encouragement that I greatly appreciate. However I'm not the kind of man that needs it.

All my life if the first time I tried something and it went right I learned a little. If it went wrong and then I fixed it I learned a lot.

Yes, I've had lots of failures with bees. But the fact is I've bought one hive, have given several hives away, keep all the family and most of the neighbors in honey and still have 7 hives.

Even though I've never seen a dime from my bees I consider my endeavor to be a success. If I add up what a strong hive produces in honey and nucs each year I can see where they could make money. I would just have to stop giving it all away!

The point I was trying to get across with this thread is if your just starting and you lose a hive don't get dejected. Bees die, try to figure out why they died and what you can do differently next time.

This could get expensive if your buying bees but doesn't cost anything if you raise your own queens and keep a couple nucs.

I would really like to hear of someone else's learning experiences.

[Jen]

My first year- An acuptuncturist/bee venom therapist suggested a bee sting on one of my wrists, arthritis. Did it. Went home, no pain for 4 days, I was . Went back a week later, stung both wrists, no pain for four days. I don't like pain pills so I was impressed. 10 minutes of fire, 4 days without pain. It was encouraged to have one beehive so I could use my own bees on command. Two days later a small beehive landed in my backyard. I stood there looking at it scratching my head.

That is what started my bee world. And the next three years I didn't have a mentor, only the internet.

First winter: Patio hive starved, didn't know that bees could starve. In the spring I got another patio hive and a standard double deep lang. All was well... for one month, American Foul Brood, the lang went up in flames.

Second winter: The patio hive made it thru the winter with flying colors. But alas, early summer my small patio hive swarmed three times in two weeks. Panic! Was told to get the bees out of the small hive and into a standard lang, and to implant the very small frames into the lang plastic frames. Did it. It worked and made it thru the third winter. This double deep that I have now is healthy and bustling.

However, last fall, my hive had a mite explosion that I was not aware of. I noticed deformed wings on my bees on the ground. Panic! Luckily I had a wonderful beekeeper in Denmark walk me thru a formic acid treatment. 2,000 mite kill. And I now have an oxalic acid vaporizer for future treatment.

And this double deep made it thru this last long cold winter. Success!

To date, I am feeding winter patties and my double deep has brood in both boxes. I still have some issues to work out this fourth season. But I have so much more information under my belt due to this forum.

I am forever grateful 

 

[Woody Roberts]

Jen
This is what I was looking for. I've never personally had any trouble with mites or disease.
For lack of a better theory I attest the lack of disease to not having any other bees near me or it just hasn't happened yet.

On mites, since I've always been more interested in raising bees than making honey I pull several nucs.
Usually one in the spring, another around of June and one at the first of August. I suspect these brood breaks help with the mites.

I have had some trouble with small hive beetles. After losing a couple hives in desperation I bought an IPK trap from green beehives. This worked so good that I bought one for my other hives. Last summer I saw one live beetle. I saw lots of dead ones though.

If you buy just one the shipping makes them a little pricy. I buy 5 at a time anymore and I think total cost is under 30 bucks each. Not a lot more than a standard bottom at the feed store.

If you had a lot of hives it would be expensive to convert but where I'm building up I just put one on every new hive I do.

I no longer give SHB a second thought.

[Jen]

Really good news on your beetle success. How do you check for mites?

[Woody Roberts]

How do I  check for mites? I really don't. When I'm checking frames I look them over good but if I understand right when you see any you already have a problem. It's very rare that I see one on a bee.

When checking the veg oil trays in the bottom it's not uncommon to see a couple. Not in every hive but I can dig around and find one.

[Jen]

Okay    so you have a screen bottom board then. I do too, that's how I check my mite count. I have a plastic realtor's sign that I smear with cooking shortening like Crisco. I check the board most every week. My experience is that if I have 10 mites on the board in one week, I get a 1,000 mite kill when I do the oxalic acid.

Frankly, I have never been able to see a mite on a bee. I sit each morning, weather permitting, shoulder leaning on the hive and watch the bees.

The mites hide on the bee bodies and the underbelly of the bees. Woody.. you cannot see them. That's how I almost lost my hive this last fall. I was researching how to winterize my hive. Suggestions of mite check were stressed. So I did the sticky board and low and behold my hive was in serious trouble. I had no idea. And I have no idea now unless I check my sticky board.

If you're using the veg oil tray, that works as well. Keep an I on that oil board on a week to two week basis. Once you see more than mites in a week, you probably have 800 or more mites on your bees. Mites on bees are the equivalent to basket ball size blood suckers on our bodies. Don't let them get the upper hand.

[Woody Roberts]

I'll certainly keep an eye on them. I do sometimes check drone larva. They really show up on them. Still very rare to see one though.

I believe most of my breeding stock, the drones anyway come from a big walnut tree about a half mile from me. I've kept an eye on them for several years. I don't know how long they've been there but their obviously mite resistant.

I've never treated with anything. I hope I never have to. But if I have to I will.