when and how to kill off the hive

[sqkcrk]

gmcharlie,
I'm sorry you haven't gotten the response you were looking for. There is someone on beesource who shakes his bees into fall packages I believe.

Sheri!! Where are you? Sheri knows about this sort of thing, I believe. Sheri of John and Sheri. They are probably busy working their bees.

I don't know how practical it would be, but after taking all of the frames of honey away from your hives, perhaps you could put all of your hives into a closed container and gas it w/ exhaust from a car or truck. I don't know how that would effect the equipment, but it would kill the bees.

[Gene Weitzel]

Kill the queen, 10 days later break any queen cells, let the brood hatch, shake the bees out and remove equipment. If I read correctly you're only depopulating 25 hives or is it 2500?

SHB can be problematic with this approach if the hive weakens much after the queen is killed, particularly in late summer. What is left of the bees will abandon the unhatched brood and abscond if the SHB population gets to high. If you don't catch it very quickly, the comb will be destroyed by the SHB larvae. Even if you do catch it before the SHB take over, you still have the issue of all that dead brood festering in the comb and you will have to freeze it to kill the SHB eggs.

[sqkcrk]

This year the honey flow is so bad, my hives on scales are LOSING weight.....

And no feeding this long would not make sense from a monetary viewpoint.

I think you should be patient. It is still early in the season, isn't it? Summer just started and there is the fall flow to look forward to.

[stangardener]

i wouldn't waste the energy doing what it sounds like nature might do for you any way.
i believe nature and the bees know better than me. let them take care it.
just take from the poor and give to the rich and let nature take her course.
spending time peta bashing is as distasteful as peta.

[11x]

i would like to buy a 6 pound package from you. if you are just gona kill them than you shouldent charge me to much and still make a profit. i may take 2, 6 pounders. one with a queen for a new hive and one to do a combine as i am trying to build alot of drawn comb this year. please pm me a price. i will send you the cages if you like.

[NewBee2007]

Yes, would you consider shaking them into packages and if so what size and how much? I wish I lived closer as I could use some bees for hive boosters... especially if the rain ends and we get a nice late Summer or Fall flow. I definitely think you have options to offing them that you might want to consider (imho). But they are your bees and you can do what you feel you need to do, but I think you might be looking for other options if you are posting... and if your not you surely got some .

[honeyshack]

let me re-itereate, I posted this in teh commercail beeks forum in the hopes of getting some input as to the methodology. unfortunatly it quickly degrades into a bash the beekeeper line.

If anybody out there has some real experince in this area of how to drawn down the hive and get rid of all larve without starting laying workers, I would appreciate a PM..

Charlie

In my first post I gave you an option or two to kill off your hives

[honeyshack]

Does this help?

Feeding bees in a bad dearth or feeding cows in a drought/flood amounts to the same thing.
When it comes to cows and a flood/drought i have experience. We had flodding last year and it took it's tole. In 2003 we had a drought, and vowed to not make the same mistakes we made in 2003. Thus our choice for last year. We had to decide to sell the herd or parts of it or buy hay. In the end we sold the cows for slaughter, took a serious beating.
I think honey bees, if you are in it to pay the bills, must be valued in the same way. Cost out the cost to feed your bees and the cost to purchase new ones next year, and the damage done by bugs when the hives sit empty for a year.
the pencil, paper, easure and calculator are an ag producers best management tools.

That said, I think I would let them hatch out in the hives and eat what is there. This would lessen the damage done by the wax moths since the bees will clean out the comb. Next, as the hives get smaller, down size from a double to a single, switch out comb, empty for frames of feed that are still in the yard.
As to the queen, in a dearth, she shuts down. The bees might decide to supercede her, let that happen, just knock down all but one cell. I picked this route because if the weather changes, there might be flowers later in the season, and you might kick yourself in the butt for destroying all. Wintering a single box might be to your benifit, if you get a fall flow.
When we sold half the herd we did it in stages. First to save on pasture we sold any animals that were crazy or did not have a calf. Then we sold the old cows that would be iffy to make it through a hard winter. Then later on, after pulling the bull 2 months, we got the vet into to preg check the rest (november after the final hay numbers were in). Any open, any the vet thought were not genetically sound, we sold.
I guess what i am trying to say is we did it in stages. This lessened the blow, allowed us to make a clear choice based on the hay we made. Depending on the # of hives you have, you might think it better to keep half or a third so you have some stock to build from in the spring.

If you do plan to keep some, get pollen patties. With the plants under stress, the pollen will not have the protien and will be near the value of straw. The bees will eat it, and gain no energy from it...got that T-shirt. PM or post if you want more info on what we did to get through the flooding here.

[gmcharlie]

Ahh some better replies..... and some peta fans...



AS some have mentioned this is farming and manageing... my thought is simple, not leave a ton of bees on little honey to starve out or have to feed all winter...

I will probably move most of the queens into 3 frame nucs for winter, hopefully that will leave me a few hundred frames of old brood/honeystores to either extract, or save for spring buildup.

I have NOT given up on them yet, and am activily feeding for a bit yet for those who can't seem to read......


What I was looking for was the method of reduction which would allow the queen to stop laying and the brood to hatch, and hopefully many of the remaining workers to backfill with hone before they die off anyway...

I assumed that some here were eliminating the queen or confineing her sometime before the fal flow to maximize honey buildup. Bees that are not tending brood build up much better and faster honey stores.

I had assumed that there was some methods out there, I have removed queens before for honey production, but your limited on how long you can do it before they it creates issues...... even confineing the queen can prompt laying workers in a large hive....

I do have a 2 frame queen box that works fairly well... put her in and combine two strong hives into a great honey builder.... I think the term used most is a "powerhouse"....

My goal was to find the best way to allow for no new brood, and let the bees clean out and backfill to the greatest effect, and how the timing of that may be monitored..



AS for packages, if you need bees that bad, there are several suppliers that sell packages all year long. I don't sell packages as our state inspector never shows up....

[Brenda]

I'm just curious if you're talking about Fugate or the old inspector? From what I understand the other one got sick and had to give up the job.

[gmcharlie]

Actually Brenda, I have never met the new guy....... I live about 180 miles from him, and since I am on the FAR edge of his teritory (IL is really housed) I completly understand.... I am sure some day He/She will pop in...

[Brenda]

Yeah, I emailed my inspector to set up an appointment, but she hasn't replied yet, so I understand. They cover a large area.

[JohnK and Sheri]

gmcharlie,
Sheri!! Where are you? Sheri knows about this sort of thing, I believe. Sheri of John and Sheri. They are probably busy working their bees.

Actually Mark, we just got back from a week in Canada fishing, (!!!) felt good to take a summer vacation for the first time in years..... the bees didn't miss us a bit.

Yes, killing off half (or sometimes even all) of the bees in fall and buying package bees to replace them used to be very common up here in the north, when packages were cheap. Some folks still do it, but it is less common.
The method most used years back was to shake a spoon of cyanagas into the entrance, the bees dropped instantly. Then shake them out in the bee yard and haul the boxes home to skritch up and get them ready for package installation. This was done after all the supers were off and once wax moths were no longer a potential problem. Up here the queens were already shut down so no brood to worry about. In this way you would be requeening every year or every other year as well.
Now I think cyanagas would be fairly difficult to come by (for a while you could not buy it in the U.S. but could in Canada. Not sure if you still can but I wouldn't want to declare it at the border ), so the bees are shook out on a cold day when they would freeze quickly, and again, after the supers were pulled, then all honey except maybe some for starting packages is extracted from the brood combs too.
In the south I don't know how you would go about killing them off. Starvation is inhumane in my opinion. Perhaps dry ice or as someone suggested, carbon monoxide?
People that shake the bees out to die are becoming increasingly rare as there is a market for those bees. Why throw something away when you can be paid for them? If you are indeed looking for the realistic economics this is the question I would be asking.
Perhaps a better tactic would be to consolidate all the brood into the colonies you will keep and let some commercial operator heading to California shake your bees into his boxes.

The Florida summer dearth drives many beeks to summer pastures, this is something I would also consider. Not only might you make more honey but you wouldn't have to start with packages every year.
Sheri

[gmcharlie]

Thanks Sheri, you answered a critiacal question as to how the brood was handled........I had been pondering a sooner reduction, before any of the stores went negative. My thought was to confine the queen to a very small area....

My current thought is to not necassarly kill the hive but probably reduce it to 2-3 frames, Nucs if you will and allow a mojor die off of older bees.

Even pondering doing the splits earlier and useing the surplus bees for a super hive and the last bit of flow.....

I made a serious math error last year and feed a group of itialans over 200lbs of honey, for no reason. the hive now is no stronger or weaker than the new ones I started this spring.... I had assumed they would have a huge die off and not eat so musc missed that one ..


So far this year the nectar flow has been so bad there is no chance of any of the hives makeing it without 100% feed, so I am trying to plan ahead and cut down the sizes and conserve the reserves....

I also enjoyed a cpl of thoughts as to why feed 100 lbs of honey worth 3-400 to a buch of bees that are only worth 100.00....... it makes sense... when your going to off the queen and replace her in the spring, the gain may not be worth the loss.....

That said, thanks again for the input, No cyangas in my future, but I definatly appreciate teh information.

[alpha6]

Why are you feeding honey to the bees and not sugar? I can sell 200 lbs of honey for 1000 bucks wholesale!! I can buy 200 lbs of sugar for $95.20. Yeah, I would call that a serious math error.

[gmcharlie]

ah it was late, and I was figuring it would be there in the spring..... didn't want to fire up the extractor...


If your getting 5.00 a lb for wholesale honey either your math is off of your doing better than the rest of the world.....

[ga.beeman]

if you want to get rid of 25 hives send me a private message thanks david

[ErnieW50]

Anyone who is going to let their hive die off this fall contact me.
I will gladly pick up the bees if there are sufficient quantities to make the drive for.
I think ten hives would be the minimum.
If you have 25 or more I am very interested.
I am in SE Missouri
Ernie Wells
wells.ernie@gmail.com
573-429-0222

[alpha6]

ah it was late, and I was figuring it would be there in the spring..... didn't want to fire up the extractor...


If your getting 5.00 a lb for wholesale honey either your math is off of your doing better than the rest of the world.....

Nope the math is right on...if I posted what I was getting retail I am afraid everyone would move to my area.

[sqkcrk]

So, how many hives do you have and how many pounds of honey do you sell each year?