Bees in a pole

[Wandering Man]

I was asked to remove some bees from a fence today by a friend.  I found a small colony in the pole for outdoor light fixture.

We've tried to do a forced abscond with with them.




3Reds pumped smoke in one end while I tried to seal up the holes.

Can't believe the bees were trying to live in a hot steel pipe with the sun beating down on them and temps in the 100's and high humidity.

This evening (3 1/2 hours later), this is what we found.  I didn't see any bees emerging from the cone.

Would the bees be bearding my nuc if the queen was still in the hive?

Do you think it would be safe to remove the nuc tomorrow evening or Sunday morning?  Or should I wait a bit longer?

[Wandering Man]

I've got three empty frames, and a frame with drawn comb as well as an empty frame feeder in there. Swarm Commander has been sprayed on the top bars.

[Perry]

Any idea how long they were in the pipe? Hard to imagine they had brood in there. If not, they are probably all out and in your catch box.

[Wandering Man]

I think they hadn't been there very long. The property owner learned about them from the folks mowing.

[Barbarian]

Aren't Africans supposed to like low hive sites ?

[Wandering Man]

They were very gentle yesterday. But the last colony we rescued went really mean after a few weeks in a nuc. We will be requeening once we've got them home.

[Wandering Man]

Went out this morning and found the bees bearding in my EZ Nuc.  Very few bees inside.  The comb had come loose, so we rubber banded the comb back on the frame.

I tried to find the queen, but was not successful.  It is a very small swarm.  I've ordered a queen that we will hopefully get this afternoon.

3Reds and I will go back out after lunch and dump the bees inside another EZ Nuc and bring them home, leaving the original Nuc behind to catch stragglers.  Tomorrow we'll go through the hive and search out the queen, if any.

Would I be correct in thinking that this is a secondary swarm, and the queen is likely a virgin? 

My second guess is that the queen is dead.  But I think not.  Everytime I scooped a bunch of bees off the front of the nuc, I would drop them inside the nuc.  But they soon reappeared on the same corner of the nuc.  There are too many nooks and crannies for the queen to hide in for me to be sure there is no queen.

[apisbees]

The queen is still in the pipe I think. The bees are fanning out of the pipe and drawing the bees out of the nuc, and with the screen they can't get back in to the pipe to be with the queen. Excessive heat or being chilled will cause the brood to expire and then it will not be a lure to keep the bees in the nuc box.
This is what you might be seeing.

[Lburou]

I think you have done everything right.   To increase chances the bees stay in the NUC you can put a frame of wet brood in the NUC.  That would probably anchor them to the NUC. 

[Wandering Man]

For what it's worth, 3Reds and I checked on the nuc earlier in the day, while it was still hot (105*F - Feels Like 110).  The bees were still bearding on the nuc.  I shook them into another box, sealed the entrance, and took them home.  We intended to go back at dusk and collect the remainder of the bees.

The winds picked up, and we had a few thunderstorms this pm, so I ran back to the bees earlier than expected.  There were quite a few bees in the nuc, with some still bearding on the outside.  I remembered that I had a 5 gallon paint strainer in my tool box and some gorilla tape.  So, I placed the strainer over the front end of the nuc and taped it down.  As a result, I managed to capture all but a handful of bees.

When I got home, I decided I could do the same thing to the other nuc to allow the bees a better shot at keeping their hive regulated.

I don't want to leave these two nucs separated for very long.  One has a bit of sugar water, the other has no resources at all.  I've got out a wooden nuc, placed a queen includer over the bottom board, and plan to dump all of the bees in there tomorrow.  I'll pull a frame of brood from another hive, to put in there first.  We have a new queen ready to go.  Hopefully I'll get lucky and find a queen tomorrow while putting all the bees in the nuc, and then add the queen.



I've ordered an inspection camera so I can go back on Monday or Tuesday and have a peek into the pipe to see what's left.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B072179BTL/ref=od_aui_detailpages00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[Wandering Man]

Update, and a few questions.

We've got all of the bees in one box.  I added brood with nurse bees still on the frame before dumping in the bees.

I never found a queen in either of the two nucs.  We set a new queen in her cage on the top bars and waited.  The bees seem interested, but not overly aggressive, so we inserted the queen cage in the hive.

Bees are gentle so far.  I can stand outside the entrance and none of the bees bother me.

I saw ants crawling around the nuc so I put some Diatomaceous Earth around the hive last night.  This morning there were a bunch of bees rolling around in the earth.  I swept up the mess, and had more bees dying in the DE this afternoon.

Tonight, 3Reds took the dogs out to the back yard for their last outing of the evening.  She noticed two or three bees circling the back porch light.  Then she saw a couple of bees walking around on the porch, under the light.  She also noticed a couple of bees working the Esperanza, which gets some of the light from the porch light.

Are these homeless bees?  Did the swarm we caught kick out all of the nurse bees?  Or was a day and a night too long for the two bunches of bees to be separated, and did one group kick out the other group after I poured them all into the same nuc?

Or, as my former teacher / wife asked?  Did these bees belong on the short bus?  Are they the Special Education bees?

Oh, in support of the last question, we went back to the pipe and took a look in the pipe.  No bees, but there were five rows of comb.  The funny thing is, the comb was almost horizontal to the earth.



Down is the left side of the video.  The little boroscope I used doesn't tell you which way is up.  And the sun was too bright for me to see anything on my cell phone, so I really didn't know what I had until I got the video home.

However, I was able to tell there were no bees in there, so I was able to take off my trap-out plywood and cone and look directly into the hive.  That's how I know the comb was laying almost completely over on it's side.

[Lburou]

I'd suspect that the pipe was rolled a bit after the combs were made, this would explain the current comb orientation.  Bees will not make combs horizontal to the ground, they will always orient the top of their comb toward the sky.  As to the bees flying around the porch light at night, do a search for 'zombie bees', that could be your explanation. 

[Wandering Man]

We got the bees home, settled in a Nuc, and gave them a frame of brood and a $32 queen. 

It took her a week to be released, but the bees did their job and welcomed her into their new home.

We fed them sugar water, and they responded first by backfilling the comb we had given them.  But then they started buidling new comb.  We saw our marked queen out and about, laying eggs last week, but there still wasn't much new comb for her.

Last night I noticed a long line of ants crawling into the nuc.  I sprinkled more DE around the nuc, but couldn't quite reach the trail the ants had made.  So, I pulled out the Amdro and sprinkled a bit around the nuc, until I got nailed on the nose.

With my nose throbbing, I retreated into my workshop, and decided the bees could manage the ants the best they could until tomorrow (this morning).  Later in the evening, we looked out and the bees were bearding on the front of the nuc.  I thought nothing of it, since the bees in the other three hives were also bearding.  It's been a hot summer.

3Reds and I went out this morning to check on the bees in the nuc.  It was totally empty.  No nectar, no brood, just ants and comb.  It looks like they had continued to draw some comb since last week, but all of the stores were gone, and so were the eggs that I'd seen.  There was one capped cell, that looked like the ants had got to.

So sad.

Do you think the ants forced the abscond?  Or do were the presence of the ants an indication that most of the bees had already left?  Maybe what we saw yesterday evening were just stragglers.  I've got two swarm traps in my yard, but the bees didn't chose either of those for a new home.

We are just hoping we don't get a call from a neighbor complaining that our bees are in their house.

All of the brood had emerged before the queen was released, and she hadn't had much room to lay eggs.  So, I'm thinking that we should have left the queen includer on for a couple of more weeks.  On the other hand, if the hive had become so weak that it could not defend itself against the ants, maybe that would have just resulted in dead bees, rather than absconded ones.

I've still got so much to learn about these little critters.

[Perry]

I'm guessing abscond alright , but why is anyone's guess. I figure the ants were probably just being opportunistic?

[Lburou]

Texas has ants like noplace I've ever seen, so it is a real problem.  Here is a repost of an ant solution: 

Use of a bait station will kill most ants. Click Here for a link with easy to follow instructions to make your own bait station. It's easy. I've been able to forego the usual grease and oil barriers by using a combination of broadcast granular insecticide and ant baits.

You will need a bait that will attract the ants but block access by honey bees (that means small holes or saw blade cut in the bait container). I mix one cup sugar with three cups water and one rounded tablespoon of boric acid. This will let the ants take the boric acid back to the nest and kill ants there. Research revealed that poison from ant baits has been found in ants more than a hundred feet from the bait itself. Boric acid is officially accepted by organic gardeners.

As long as the ant is in a carbohydrate phase of its diet, they will take this mix. Some recommend adding an oil to attract ants during their protein phase, but I haven't tried that yet. HTH

You can order bait stations on Amazon too. 

[Wandering Man]

Thanks Lee. I hadn't considered a permanent bait station before.
I've used Martin's powder before, which seems to work well for non-Fireants. But I'm out of it right now.

I was shaking out Amdro when I got my farewell kiss on the nose.