Two dwindling hives.

[Oldbee]

I have two hives that came out of winter with a low population of bees. I finally reduced them to one deep but they are not getting any better even though our weather is now warm/seasonal. They both have queens. One queen is laying a 6 inch circle of eggs on about 2 frames with some larvae; no capped brood. The other queen--less then that. There are only about 500 bees/hive. I have heard of baby nucs with less bees than that.

I know I need to get one of these hives into a nuc pretty soon [today] :rolleyes:. Is there anything else I can/should do? If I 'de-queen' one of the hives, is it worth it to introduce the workers that are left to the other hive? How best to do that to minimize fighting? I only have one deep nuc box; no other,..'resources' except a newly installed [yesterday 5/6/09] package. Thanks.

[LBEE]

Hi Oldbee!

Do they have stores of honey and pollen? I would be feeding them unless they were honeybound. Because the cluster size is so small, they will build up slowly. They must produce enough heat to keep the brood warm and this is more difficult with a small cluster.

The other issue is why they are so small. What were your mite counts last fall? If you had high Varroa mite counts, this would result in a hive losing most of its bees over winter. (Or not making it over winter.) If the mite counts are high, the colony will not be able to build up quickly or at all. In other words, the cause of the colonies being so small affects whether it is likely that the hives will recover.

Larry

[Oldbee]

Yes they have honey and pollen. They were bringing in pollen earlier this spring; much faster then they are now. It was probably mites in the fall and weakened bees over winter and early spring.

Are the mites still affecting these bees now with so little brood? Is there no hope for this situation?

[Bud Dingler]

I would suspect nosema over mites. drastic nosema cases they will not take syrup with fumidil.

mites need a host to proliferate and you don't have many

do a web search or look at Eric Mussens and Randy Olivers pages for a spray approach of fumidil syrup on dwindling hives.

[Oldbee]

I did feed syrup with Fumagilin-B in the fall. There was no evidence of nosema that I could tell; only normal spotting from cleansing flights around the hives this spring. No microscope to check this though.

"drastic cases they will not take syrup with fumidil".
This spring I gave a pollen patty to 4 hives which they did not feed on. I thought it was too early so tried it again--same thing; a nibble or two. That has never happened in 3 years; very unusual.

Would fermenting sugar syrup [moisture?] have something to do with the population decline and weakness in the early spring? I may have fed too late in the fall :o. Some of the frames that I brought in this spring show signs of fermenting. In any case, the queens look healthy [outwardly/physically] and it's terrible that they might not survive. One of them might be my purchased NWC queen. If I had some other sources. Last year at this time I had tons of frames of capped brood.

[db_land]

Greetings Oldbee,
Maybe it's too much work, but here's something you can try:
1) Put follower boards in the hives so that the bees are restricted to 2 or 3 frames (the brood frames and one frame of honey/nectar/pollen).
2) Spray the frames and bees with a mixture of 1:1 sugar syrup, 1 teaspoon fumidil, 1 teaspoon of honey-bee-healthy (or the equivalent).
3) Add one teacup of the package bees also well sprayed with the same mixture.
4) Wait a day or two. Repeat steps 2 and 3.
5) Repeat step 4 until the 2 or 3 frames are crowded - then add a drawn brood frame.
If the queens are any good they should take off laying; otherwise I would requeen if the bees havn't already started supercedure proceedings.

[Matt NY]

Seems like it is too far gone to bother with.

If you decide to join them don't dequeen, let them decide.

Do you have any stronger hives that you could grab some brood from? Just get nurse bees to cover the brood. Shake all the bees from a frame of brood then put it over an excluder, only nurse bees will climb up to cover the brood.

[cow pollinater]

It has always been my feeling that if I'm going to mess around with trying to save dinks then two queens are better than one. You need all the brood you can get. Why not separate them with two excluders with a stick in between them and combine them as a two hive setup to pool the resources.
I've had good luck with that. The key is to let them build up and then add a new queen that will keep you from having the same problem next year.

[Roland]

Find two strong hives. Swap places on a sunny day between the strong and week hives. Inspect the weak ones in 4-7 days. If the queens are not laying eggs at a level proportionate to the new population, I would suspect the queens. If they are laying fine, be happy, but think about why they got themselves so weak to begin with.


Roland