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Colony update here in Pa

177K views 703 replies 83 participants last post by  laketrout 
#1 ·
This has been one of the strangest Winters in quite awhile.
We've had temps in the low 50's numerous times so far and the bees have been bringing in a pale yellow pollen.

Was checking out the three colonies my friend has and saw that one of the "stronger" colonies has finally died.
There were many dead bees on the comb and looks like they either starved or froze to death in place.
Recently he and I were doing an inspection on a warm day and we saw a few hundred bees and the queen in that hive along with plenty of honey stores left. Didn't look good at that point.

What was the "weakest" colony going into Winter is now booming! Still trying to figure that one out.
It has two deeps and a medium with lots of honey and they had eaten most of the sugar we placed on the inner cover.
Btw, that sugar did a great job absorbing moisture.

Earlier this Winter we removed a medium super from it that didn't have much honey stores.
But after seeing how full the hive is, I pulled a medium super full of honey off the dead hive and placed it on the "weak" hive.
Now they'll have a little more elbow room and more stores to chew on.

The third colony is still alive but the population is down. Not sure if that one will make it till Spring.
He is planning to split the "weak" hive at least once and maybe twice if things continue looking good.

Allen
 
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#390 ·
Hey Everyone, 1st year beek in SE PA. My top bar hive has a split cluster. I suspect they are queenless. We are supposed to get some warm weather (67 but rainy) this weekend. Would you recommend opening the hive and putting the cluster together as one. The bees are at the back of the hive and the front. Should I move them all to the front??

 
#391 ·
I don't have experience with top bar hives but my understanding is that this is the problem with them. YOu need to make sure that the cluster is on one side while the stores are on the other. In a Lang you want the stores above the cluster which isn't very hard because that's how they typically put it anyway. With the warmer weather coming up they'll probably be able to break those clusters and rejoin as they are able. It does seem that they are lite on stores. You may want to consider putting some dry sugar in there somewhere. From what the video looked like the cluster on the back side was next to a follower board and the front side was at the entrance. It seemed that the combs in the middle were empty. What you can do is remove one frame and simply pour dry sugar in it's place. I'd remove one that's as close to the back of the front cluster as possible but make sure it's empty. You don't want to hinder them from getting on either side of any frame that has brood or you run a risk of that brood dying. Perhaps post a new thread in the top bar forum. (I think there's one) Or post in the general beekeeping thread. Hopefully you can get others with experience w/ top bar hives to chime in. I personally wouldn't assume that they're queenless. It seems that if the cluster was in the middle and stores on either side then that just created a natural break in the cluster as the bees went outside of the cluster to get to the stores and that shifted things a bit.
 
#392 ·
Thanks for your insight. I'll wait to see if they rejoin this weekend. The combs in between the two clusters are actually fully capped. They are about 17" wide at the top, 10 " wide at the bottom, and 10.5" deep... So they have about 6 or 7 fully capped, heavy bars. I was going to wait until January/February before adding fondant. What do you think?

ETA - I'm adding a lang in the spring. :) The TBH is great for learning and the kids love to look in the window, but it has caused nothing but roadblocks.
 
#393 ·
My first question would be when did you last check this hive? If it was over a month ago then they may not have that much in capped stores at this point. Second question is do they have a second entrance (or a space they can get in and out of through the back side)? This weekend I hope to do some inspecting / working on one hive particularly. If the weather is above 50 you can quickly open them up. With your hive I don't know of your setup, but I'd try to cover some parts as you look into others so you don't stress them out too much, but it's supposed to be in the 60's on Sunday so that would be the best chance. I'd inspect those center frames. At least on the edges they aren't capped. Perhaps in the center the could be, but in looking at your video that's what I thought. It made sense that the cluster would split in this case. (Well to my logical / sometime illogical mind) If they only have one entrance and this weekend you don't see them flying out of the opposite end then they'll have to recombine. For the bees in the back to get out they'll have to cross over through the front. Hopefully this doesn't cause issues for you because they may have been apart for several days / weeks, but hopefully things will be fine. On another note I am not sure of where you got your bees from, but there are some queens (specifically southern queens) that never really shut down overwinter. They will go through a bunch more resources then a northern queen would.

On another note. . . What kind of roadblocks has the top bar hive caused for you? I can imagine some things, but I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on this.
 
#394 ·
Adding fondant is your call. When to do it is also your thoughts as to when it'd be most beneficial. If you find out that the bees don't have the center frames capped, then I'd add stuff this weekend that hopefully would cary them through the winter. January / February you may not have a chance and if they don't make it until then you'll open them up to a dead hive. In research I've done you want about 3/4 of the hive (whatever size they've been using) to be capped stores to get through our winters. So if you have a 10 frame box you want at least 7 of them solid. Now you'll probably have stores in all 10, but the middle 3 or 4 will only have capped stores in the upper and outer portions. They need cluster space. I hope this helps.
 
#396 ·
Good deal DPBsbees. I checked my hives today also. I had 17 going into winter. A few seemed to be in trouble leading into fall (late swarm captures). I had 2 dead outs of the 17. Added some insurance sugar bricks to the lighter hives and buttoned them up. I have four 6 over 6 medium frame Nucs - they were all doing great, so I'll likely have some insurance going into spring to cover some losses. I'll check on them again in early - mid February.

I did have one hive that was queen-less in Mid November. Debler lives close by and contacted me that he had a NUC that was crashing, so he caged the queen for me and I installed her. I'm still holding hope that we may have saved that hive. If it makes it, Debler and I will both have one more hive next year than we would have. I'll make a split and return her once they build up some and their are drones available. Keeping fingers crossed.

Tomorrow I'm going to take 6 frames of capped stores off the dead outs and add a third box to a couple of the strongest NUCS. That will give them more room for rearing brood in the spring. Next year I plan to winter all my 6 frame medium NUCs in 3 boxes rather than 2.

Happy Holidays!
 
#398 ·
I'm 25 for 25 have not lost any hives this year.
Going to check to see if I need to ad sugar to any tomorrow it's going to be in the 60s .
Hoping for a good turn out come spring but winter has not even started and it's been cold in these parts.
So guess time will tell.
 
#399 ·
Went though my 2 dead-outs today. They seemed to just dwindled down to very small clusters and froze in that last cold snap. Something must have happened with the queens late in the year. I dug up 3 of my custom 6 frame med NUC boxes, filled each with stores from the dead hives, and added a 3rd box to 3 out of 4 of my NUCS. They should have plenty of food to make it till spring now. I plan to start feeding pollen sub patties late Feb/Early March.
 
#401 ·
Hi everybody, I checked some of my hives today. I'm down with the flu so I only checked the hives out back. I have seven hives and six nucs in the back yard and so far I only lost one hive to mites. I had one nuc that was lite so I added some frames from the dead out. It sure was nice to mess with the bees, feels like spring.:D
 
#402 ·
I checked on the hives yesterday. We had record high temps in NE Pennsylvania in the low 60s. This was a great opportunity to do an assessment. I added fondant packs. I was able to buy a 50-pound block of fondant and made one-pound individual packs with my vacuum food sealer. Found one dead out and two that were weak out of eleven total hives. Couldn't believe how strong a few of them were. I was able to wrap a few of the hives with tar paper about 2 weeks ago and planned to get the rest yesterday, but with the massive snow melt and imminent rain, I didn't want to trap any moisture between the hive and tar paper, so I'll get them later this week. You learn as you go and I learned that I should have had them all wrapped by Thanksgiving. We had an early cold snap this year. Unlike the delayed Winter of last year.

2013 was a memorable year for me in beekeeping. I experienced my first bear attack. Thank you to the Pennsylvania Game Commission who came out and assesssed and inventoried my damages and reimbursed me. Took the money and installed an electric fence using cattle mesh. The bears were back all summer and fall trying to get at that sweet honey. I caught them many times on the trail cam trying to find a way in. I wish I would have had it set to video to catch that moment when they got the shock to the nose. A couple of times, I hung strips of raw bacon from the wire as a little enticement.

I plan to increase to 18 hives in 2014 and a few nucs.

Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas to all of you and your families. I hope you have a very prosperous honey harvest in 2014.
 
#403 ·
Well the bees are going to have a cold week I see temps in the -s MON. night -14 guess we will see how they fair this coming 7 days.
Its so cold . All my hives are humming and it's been a cold winter so far . I hate winter the older I get if I had more money and time I'd head south.;)
Hope every ones bees are doing well and good luck in 2014.:thumbsup:
 
#405 ·
How are things going?
A few weeks back we had high winds with temps in the upper 50's and found two of our hives knocked over late in the day. Not sure if it was wind or a deer because they are in a protected spot.
The night before I had checked on them and they were all ok.

Didn't expect to find what I found.
The first hive had 2 deeps and 1 medium and was one of the late Nucs from Spring that didn't get going till the Fall flow.
That hive toppled against a colony that was started as a Nuc and was the only colony to successfully raise their own queen.
They were in 3 deeps and the top super is full of honey.

The first colony population was so, so and the second colony was great.

When the first hive fell into the second one, some of each hives supers came apart and they were all resting on each other.
Normally I put ratchet straps around the cement blocks and supers but for some reason I didn't do that this time.

Bees in the first hive were exposed to the weather but seemed ok.
There were no bees in the second one.
The population in the first hive was booming so they must be all one big happy family now.
But I've probably lost that queen in the second colony.

I restacked the first hive and added the full deep super from the second hive.
That put us at 9 colonies.
We had 8 but a friend gifted us a weak colony at the end of Fall that I reduced down for winter.
In late Summer I had started two out yards with a strong and not so strong colony in each.

Just checked on the colonies today.
One strong colony is dead. I took a full deep super of honey from the dead one and placed it on the weaker one next to it. Lotsa bees in there and thought I was gonna get stung. Almost like springtime again. LOL

The two weaker ones are holding their own.
The gifted colony is still alive.
Due to my lack of attention last Fall, one of the weaker ones had a mouse nest in two deeps. It caused the bees to mover to one side of both deeps.
I killed the mice, cleaned out the nest, added a mouse guard and rearranged the honey into one deep due to their population size.
They are still kicking! Amazing.
Mouse guards are going on early from now on.

Tomorrow I'll replenish sugar on the remaining 7 hives with my suit on.
 
#406 ·
How are things going?

When the first hive fell into the second one, some of each hives supers came apart and they were all resting on each other.

.....The gifted colony is still alive..
Gifted Hive is Right! You lost one, but it could have been worst. I checked my 3 hives today when it hit 50 here in the western part of the Commonweath. All 3 were flying. Being a first beek, I worried entirly too much. I tried to open the tops to give them some surgar bricks they wouldn't hear to it, so since the bricks were mushy anywhow, I jamed them into the center vent holes (3 inch) in the candyboards. That should keep then happy for a few days. Wednesday looks like it will be warm enough to go in again.

Bests,
Bob

https://www.facebook.com/WcbaWestmorelandCountyBeekeepersAssociation?ref=hl
co-adminstrator
 
#407 ·
Have not checked my hives in a while. I went into winter with 17 hives (5 at my house, and 12 at my brothers place). In Dec I had 2 dead outs, one from each yard. I checked the 4 remaining ones at home today - just visited each, placed my ear to a box and knocked. All 4 remaining are still alive. Will check on the other yard tomorrow, hopefully the remaining 11 will be ok.

PAHunter62
 
#408 ·
Opened hives to add Dadant winter patties. Five double deeps and one double nuc. Four of the five deeps have huge clusters that fill up the entire ten frames on the top deep. One deep has smaller cluster (volleyball size) and the nuc has softball sized cluster. All of the hives were flying yesterday and today (47 degrees F).
 
#409 ·
chr157y, How are things now? What has that split cluster done?

I checked all of my hives today. 2 look great, 2 look Ok, and one is small. I had 10 going into winter, now I'm at 5. I think my issue is nosema and mites. I know of at least 2 hives that had nosema, and 2 that are going still now have it. So we'll see how things are in a few weeks. I did add some pollen patties to all of them today. For some of the hives I expect that this patty will be gone within this week. For others I'm not sure of. Here's hoping for spring!!!
 
#410 · (Edited)
I'm in Central Arkansas in an Ice Storm right now.
I put fondant candy on all my hives last Sunday when it was 66 degrees.
Now the Ice is so heavy I worry about the power going off, cept I do have a generator.
If I were you I'd put candy on them being a cake of sugar, fondant fudge, or a candy brick.
That small hive is one that will need food close.
All this weather is headed ya'lls way and it's suppose to stick around for a week or two.
It's a tad early for protein patties for it can trick the queen into laying.
I won't put syrup or protein patties on mine until around the end of the 2nd week of Febuary on a warm day.
I just raise the lid and inner cover, add the fudge and close it back up.
 
#411 ·
from 66 degrees to now solid ice!!! That's pretty crazy. I know that the patties are slightly early, but I wanted to get it on them now. I want to encourage them to start building up. I figure I'll need to go back into the hives in 2 weeks to add more unless we get a warm up for a week or so. (I don't expect it at this point) but this weekend was the first time that the temps here got anywhere near 50 so I could check and insert them. Hopefully in 2 weeks I'll be able to add more to those that need it. I'm hoping this may help get a good honey crop this year!!!
 
#412 ·
Got to my second yard today. There were 11 hives out of 12 still alive before this latest cold snap. Today, I found one more dead-out, so 10 still alive there. All in all, I have 14 out of 17 still alive. The one today had lots of bees on the bottom board. I suspect mites may have been their downfall- seemed to be lots of stores remaining. In 2-3 weeks, I'll pop the lids and look to add emergency food where needed, and start them on some pollen sub.
 
#413 ·
Well it's been a cold crappie winter up here in SNOW SHOE that's for sure the apiary is hanging in there .
Out of 12 DBL. deeps and 13 nucs. I have lost 2 nucs and 1 DBL. deep so far.
As I get older I hate winter in this area I was just telling my wife as I look out the window at the snow falling we need to move south by the time I'm 60 this **** sucks!!!
I have a sustainable apiary and my bees are dealing with theses crazy temps. just find. And if my bees are doing good through this winter I bet spring will be fun . I have 20 new nuc boxes and a enough boxes to make 30 nucs and 20 DBL deeps so I'm ready .
I had 1 dead out I did a post mortem on and there was a little brood so there growing
This week looks like another lovely wintery mix we need a break .:(
 
#414 ·
I went out and checked on the hives earlier this week before the snow arrived. We got a one-two punch on Monday and Wednesday here in the Poconos with 8 inches of the white stuff on Monday and then another 10 inches with an inch of ice on Wednesday. The groundhog really screwed us. Of the 10 double deep hives and 1 triple deep nuc going into winter, I lost one double deep and my nuc. The double deep was weak going into winter.

It's been about a month since we had the 60 degree F weekend where I was able to open the hives and give them fondant. Yesterday, it reached 30 degrees with full sun. The next few days are calling for the same. I'm hoping that with the black tar paper wrapped around the hives that the sun will warm the hives enough where the cluster will be able to expand and reach their stores. The next 10 days are not supposed to get about 32F.

I placed my order for a few 3 lb packages for an expansion project at a neighbors farm. They are organic farmers and were happy when I approached them about placing some hives on their property. With working a full-time job, I'm only looking to reach 20 total hives and 5 nucs. My travel time with work has dropped to zero. No more trips to Iraq or Afghanistan.

Snow Winter Mailbox
 
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