Observations on the draught

[FordGuy]

Please post a few bullet comments on the results of the draught in your parts. I'd like to end up having a pretty good set of observations/lessons learned. Thanks.

* more bees devoted to carrying water
* appears water is stored in comb?
* robbing easy to start
* brood rearing remained at the level for non-draught
* ants are a serious threat in my area, moreso in a draught for some reason

[Apuuli]

Wait. Things are going so poorly in Iraq that they are actually thinking of drafting bees now?! Just the drones though, right?

[FordGuy]

[Geico caveman]uh.................what?[Geico caveman]

[BeeAware]

NW Alabama in Cat 4 (exceptional) drought. Honey crop very low; lots of bees on water detail; the few blooms that we did have produced little nectar; normal bee build-up with strong hives. It's a shame to have all those strong colonies with nothing for them to gather. I'm feeding pollen substitute now hoping to provide protein needed for rearing healthy winter bees.

[nc_beekeeper]

Here in SW NC we haven't seen a drop of rain in a little over 4 weeks. I've got a lot of bees on water detail. Got lots of bees right now but last checked revealed that brood rearing had slowed a lot, with brood and eggs only in 2-3 frames per hive. Hardly any fall flow of any sort. Like BeeAware, i'm feeding sugar syrup and waiting for my pollen sub to get here so I can put some of it on them.

[tecumseh]

we are experiencing monsoon this year fordguy so my comment are more a reflection of the past two years:

* more bees devoted to carrying water
this may be more related to brood rearing, although undoubtly in hot-dry weather more water is consumed for cooling

* appears water is stored in comb?
never really noticed this myself... are your sure this is water or simply thin nectar?

* robbing easy to start
definitely and it gets even worse when my migratory neighbors move back south.

* brood rearing remained at the level for non-draught
although it requires some time to evolve, I would argue that given a signifcant time frame brood rearing is throttle back and will approach zero if the dry spell is long enough. this MIGHT be a pretty good selection device for stock since there could be a lot of positive side effects for genetic material that 'knows' when to limit brood rearing.

* ants are a serious threat in my area, moreso in a draught for some reason
this season monsoon like climate here have significantly limited ant problems. it seem to me that ants (fire ants) blossom here at the end of a rainy spell follow by dry-hot weather. heavy rains spread the fire ants but they seem to not thrive until dry weather ensues.

[Ardilla]

A lot of bees are just hanging out in the hives when they should be foraging or tending brood. They have the bored appearance of cubicle-dwelling office workers.

[paintingpreacher]

Tough in this part of the country. Very little rain all year and no rain in several weeks with temps over 100 every day. Everything looks dead, bees are very quiet except for hauling water. I do not even see any pollen coming in. Have had to combine a few hives.
The only thing I see doing well is hive beetles. This is my first year to see these critters and I don't like em. Not sure what to do about them except keep the hives as full of bees as I can. It is time for goldenrod . but too dry for it to bloom. Went to buy a few queens last week, the queen breeder said the hot weather had been tough on his queen boxes.
Weather channel says chance of rain this weekend,, I HOPE HE IS RIGHT.

[FANNBEE]

In central MS we are having a terrible time with the beetles. They are really putting a hurt on some beeks.....losing hives. Same weather as North MS, but my bees are bringing in a lot of pollen. Need rain.

[Joseph Clemens]

Here on the Northwest side of Tucson, in an area called "Picture Rocks", we had almost no Winter rains (2006-2007), but we still had our Mesquite honeyflow - almost nothing stops it, however there was so little forage for build-up that the bees used most of the honeyflow to build-up rather than store surplus. Then into Spring and early Summer it continued to be much drier and hotter than even our typically dry and hot weather. For the first time, ever, for me, there was a period of more than a month when the bees were not even bringing in pollen. I assume that most of them were busily hauling water (the koi pond was losing 15 gallons or more per day). During this time, I even had two colonies melt down and perish from the heat. Then our Summer rains began and they have been more than we get most years, and now there appears to be a minor honeyflow beginning. I certainly hope this is true, at least they have been bringing in orange and yellow pollen, enough to fill many combs in each hive. A very good sign.

[paintingpreacher]

It is so dry, the Baptist are beginning to baptize by sprinkling.
The Methodist are using wet wipes.
The Presbyterians are giving out rain checks.
And the Catholics are praying for the wine to turn back to water.

EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE ALRIGHT, GOD LOVES US ALL!

[MGBee]

It's so dry here, that today I saw 2 trees chasing a dog.

Regards,
Miles

[FANNBEE]

What....left over wine?

[BeeAware]

Noticed that many are having problems with small hive beetles on top of the drought etc. Here is something that I have used for the beetles that seems to work and it is safe and cheap. I put white salt, the kind used to cure meat, on the ground in front of and around my hives. This kills the small beetle larva in the ground. Just like putting salt on a slug. It dries up the larva and does not harm the bees.

[paintingpreacher]

I have a fifty pound bag of mineral salt, wonder if that would work?

[Ross]

they definitely store water in the comb, then evaporate it to cool the hive. There is far too much of it during August to be nectar.

[FordGuy]

I saw so much crystal clear liquid in teh combs when NOTHING was in bloom

[TwT]

ford I have noticed the same thing, the ant have run bee's out of 8 hive so for this year, 5 russian and 3 swarms I collected this year, the russians were in nuc's and about 1 month old, I seen ants go past 4 nucs and run the russians out, they are bad during times of draughts...

[EKW]

We went 9 weeks without a drop of rain and are in a Severe Drought. I believe our county has been declared a disaster area. But, in spite of that, all summer I thought our bees were doing pretty well. I put on supers with uncoated plasticell foundation which was given to me by a friend who would have thrown it out- I am too frugal to let that happen so I told him I would try it. As expected the bees were slow to start drawing it. I did not realize at first how much honey was going into the brood chambers but it turned out that they were storing a LOT. I corrected that, but not before brood rearing slowed down a bit. Once they had some comb drawn they started putting honey in the supers and the hives built up so fast that I wound up making splits at the end of July (I had already split once back in the Spring). Normally I would not have done that but the darn bees built up so fast I was worried about swarming.

When I did the splits I added a deep brood chamber to each hive which meant that they pretty much quit storing honey in the supers and started storing it in the deeps. In spite of the bad weather and odd management technique I still got about 3 medium supers per hive. Not a huge amount, but ok. The bees are looking super healthy, hives are strong, no mite problems, and I'm pretty happy.

Well, earlier today I visited two area beekeepers and both reported that their bees have not done well at all and they both expect low yields. One of them told me that he has been feeding nucs, and none of his hives made much honey at all. (He is 87 years old and I think has kept bees for around 86 of those years, lol). I came home feeling bad for both of them, but at the same time feeling as if my bees did a lot better, overall, than I realized. And, on top of that, we planted 26 acres of buckwheat which, due to stress from the drought, started blooming two weeks early. We happened to get a little rain the week after the bloom started, and now the bees are working the buckwheat like crazy- we may not even need to feed for winter- might even make a surplus from the buckwheat- go figure. I can't claim to be a great beekeeper, but I do seem to have some of the dumbest luck when it comes to the bees!

[EKW]

One thing I forgot to add- I am seeing TONS of yellowjackets this summer- way more than normal, and I do attribute that to the drought. I don't know why the bees seem to have plenty of forage and the yellowjackets don't, but that seems to be the case. The YJ's are constantly trying to rob the bee hives and they are all in the empty equipment I have stored outside. So far, the bees seem to be holding them at bay.