Collapsed Comb, No guards, listless hive, WHAT TO DO?

[SRBrooks]

A huge comb collapsed in the Texas heat in one of my TBHs since my last inspection about 10 days ago. The hive numbers are down, the bottom of the hive is covered in honey and dead bees, there are no guards, and the bees are listless. I tried to look for the queen, but it looks like some other combs are pulling away from the bars, and I don't want to make matters worse by pulling the bars apart. I suspect that the queen may have been killed in the comb collapse.

I saw no dead bees outside the hive entrance, and even my causing vibration and messing with the entrance did nothing to bring bees out. There was one guard, and she just walked back inside.

I have another TBH that is going strong. What do you think about my taking the weak hive and just combining it with the strong one? Unless, of course, you think it would be worth a try to go for another queen in the weak hive just in case?

My strong hive is now suddenly SO strong that I wonder if many of the other bees may have joined them? Does this happen much? The hives are about 50 yards apart.

[Tom Brueggen]

If you lost your queen then the foragers may have drifted to the queen right hive. a big part of them finding their way home is scent, as well as sight. I noticed severe drifting in one of my splits. It's kind of funny really. I was stumped by the depressed attitude of my queenless hive after dealing with a very moody queenless hive in the past. But I guess I'm not alone. It would be interesting for the sake of beekeeping to record the different variables that can make a queenless hive act differently. My experience last fall was a very small swarm (softball sized) and the weather was much cooler. They had no comb and no brood to distract them. Now I have a queenless nuc with 5 bars of brood/stores and the bees seem to just be waiting to die. Their attitude is so strikingly different from the other two nucs that were split at the same time, and those two now have good queens. I actually suspected queens in the correct nucs just by the higher moral observed from looking through the window.

[SRBrooks]

I suspected something was wrong as soon as I approached the hive. No activity at the entrance! Usually there's a lot going on there. I have an observation window on my TBH, and it's not my imagination that the energy of the hive is way down. And they weren't at all interested in my presence.
I scooped up what I could of the collapsed comb and honey, and left it inside the TBH, toward the back. This crew has always done a phenomenal job at keeping their hive clean, so I'd like to recheck their housekeeping and energy level in a few days.
If the hive still appears weak and demoralized, do you recommend combining them with my strong one?

[Tom Brueggen]

I guess that depends on how confident you are with their ability to recover. Are they building queen cells, or do they have the resources to do so? If you want to do a minilulative move to get some bees back, you could trade the hives places to get all those foragers into the weak hive. But I don't know that that would be any good of they don't have a queen.
I'd watch to see of they start raising a queen, and of they don't then recombine.
I'm just wondering, do you think the collapsed comb could have triggered a swarm? I have no theory behind this other than the bees thinking the hive was no longer an acceptable home. But you mentioned that the other hive boomed, which leads me back to the suspicion that you lost your queen and your foragers drifted to the stronger scent.
I'm interested to see what happens, please keep us informed.

[SRBrooks]

I also suspected a swarm, as the strong hive (Queen Latifah's) was just so mind-blowing booming all of a sudden. The number of bees scrambling around the unused portion of the hive was noticeably more, and they were all energetic and excited. I saw no fighting, however.
I saw no queen cells in the weak hive, but I couldn't get a close look at all the combs due to the possibility of causing more to collapse. The only comb I could see had only 5 cells of capped brood. (Not Drones)
How much time should I give the weak hive before I combine them?

[Tom Brueggen]

To be clear, I was suggesting that the hive may have swarmed as a result of feeling crowded by the collapsed comb. That has nothing to do with the booming numbers in the other hive. The bees would not have swarmed to another hive. I was suggesting that your foragers may have drifted to the other hive due to it's stronger queen scent.
The definition of a swarm is that of an organized leaving, with a queen to seek a better home. Drifting is a phenomena where bees from one hive end up in another. Not really a phenomon at all, but some say that. It makes sense to me. Haha, when I was a kid I didn't have much interest in a house with no cook. So if Mom wasn't home if to to someone else's house

[Keefis]

tom,
can brooks take a bar from the good hive(with fresh eggs) and give it to the weak hive so they will have the possibility of requeening themselves? Then if that fails,recombine.

[SRBrooks]

Thanks, Tom. Gotcha.'
In drifting, do the drifters made the "new" hive their permanent home?

Tom & Keefis: How much time do I have before the weak hive will most likely die without some intervention?

Thanks for your advice,
Sondra

[Tom Brueggen]

tom,
can brooks take a bar from the good hive(with fresh eggs) and give it to the weak hive so they will have the possibility of requeening themselves? Then if that fails,recombine.

That is exactly what I am doing with my queenless nuc right now. They had a first round queen hatch, but I guess she never made it home. So I took a bar of eggs from the hive with my original strong queen and gave it to them so they could try again. Upon checking last night they have at least one queen cup they are constructing in the middle of the frame. A cell in the middle of a frame is "typically" indicative of an emergency queen, which is their case. I emphasize typically, because when I originally made my splits, I stole the queen away to a different split, forcing the bees to build a new one. They pulled swarm cells on the edges of comb, instead of emergency cells in the middle of the comb. Don't let the definitions confuse you, just take it as a general lesson in beekeeping. Terms tend to get misused or ill assigned. Just because a cell is located in a particular position on the comb, does not 100% guarantee that it is a given type of cell.

Thanks, Tom. Gotcha.'
In drifting, do the drifters made the "new" hive their permanent home?

Tom & Keefis: How much time do I have before the weak hive will most likely die without some intervention?

Thanks for your advice,
Sondra

Foragers that drift have to be accepted into the new hive by the guards. Typically though, this is not a problem, as a bee coming in with stores is almost always accepted. Once in the hive she will pick up the scent of that hive and become one of them. However, there is a chance that going out the next day she could drift back to the old hive or a different hive. Odds are however in your case, with only two hives, and one being queenless, she will tend to drift to the queenright hive based on it's smell. Bees use two senses to find their way home, sight and smell. So two hives in the middle of a field can look a lot alike, thus, defer to smell. And they will trend to the hive that has a stronger queen scent.

Your typical worker bee lives for around 6 weeks. On average it takes 3-4 weeks to have a queen hatch and mate, assuming you have fertile eggs to begin with. Eggs are an egg for three days, then hatch into a larva. It's during the early hours (I think within ~24 hours) as a larva that the bees must feed it royal jelly to make it a queen. If in that time frame it does not get royal treatment, that egg will become a worker. But you have to go back to the beginning. How long ago did the comb fall and possibly squish the queen? That should be considered time zero. In only a couple of hours, the bees will detect that they are queenless and start taking measures. So if larva were hatching then (as their likely was some) the bees would have picked them. If by some fluke you had no larva, then the bees will have to wait until a fertilized egg hatches to make it a queen. So there could be a three day gap, and up to 5 days before you would notice any queen cell cups.

How much brood/stores are in the queenless hive? As long as there are enough workers and food to sustain the brood, bees will continue to hatch for the next couple weeks, and you're numbers should stay relatively steady (aside from foragers drifting). As long as they have stores, I would not feed just yet, to prevent any backfilling of the brood nest. Then again I guess it doesn't matter if there is no queen to lay eggs anyway. But as long as they have food, it would just be wasteful to feed them IMHO. I've started feeding mine, but only because the new queen is outrunning the comb building, so I'm boosting their resources so they can pull comb faster. But I am not feeding my queenless hive.

So, I'd say you have up to six weeks. But you should know after just a couple weeks if they have a new queen hatched out or not. If you see eggs from the new queen, then your set. If you see that they raise one but she fails, like in my case, you may want to consider combining. I say that only because you don't know the exact date that that comb fell, and you could be 10 days behind already. So on July 2nd you observed what you think to be a queenless hive, but you don't know how long they've been queenless. You didn't mention any eggs/larva, only a few cells of capped brood. I think you said you didn't open the hive, so you wouldn't have been able to look close enough to see eggs or infant larva. So lets run on what we know. On July second they were queenless. If they start building a queen cell three days from now (assuming worst case scenario), then on July 14th, the queen will be past any risk of damage during sensitive development. At that point you'd be safe to open the hive and do a thorough inspection of the hive. If at that point you see no signs of a queen, I'd combine as you are already behind so much, I'm not sure you'd have enough life in your workers to raise another.

I know this is a long time to wait, and someone else may want to rebuke me on it, but keep in mind I'm running on worst case scenario, since you don't know when the comb actually collapsed, or how long the queen has been gone. I'd hate for you to crack open the hive during that development stage and possibly damage a forming queen. If you can wait that long, I'd just keep peeking through the window each day looking for details. The sensitive development is three days following the capping of the queen cell. So if by chance you somehow see a capped cell through the window tomorrow (not sure if that is possible) then you would know not to mess with the bees for three days following. Once they are past that three day window, you can do an inspection if you want to get a closer look at the queen cells and other activity in the hive.

I've probably said too much and confused you more. Sorry. Look up the queen rearing calendar published by thebeeyard.org. Enter in whatever date you wish for the graft date, that being the day that you think the bees may have started building a queen. Like I said, I picked yesterday since that is when you said you think you observed the hive queenless. She could have died as early as yesterday morning, you just don't know in your case. The calendar will help you understand where I was grabbing all these number from. Hope I did more help than harm here!

[SRBrooks]

WoW! Thanks so much for all the information. No, you didn't confuse me; you've given me a lot of hope. I'm brand-new as of April, and the possibility of losing a hive already was a real downer. Thanks to you, I know what to look for, and I have some options.
This morning, I approached the hive at about 15 feet (wasn't suited up) just so I could get a feel for what's going on. There was a lot of activity at the entrance, as opposed to yesterday. I'll suit up later and open the hive. I feel encouraged just by seeing the hive appear so active, but I hope it's not robbing. Can't tell yet, but will let you know what I find.
Just noticed that you are in Houston. I grew up around the Gessner/Memorial Drive area.
Thanks SO MUCH for your time and advice.

[Tom Brueggen]

Indeed, keep your chin up. I'm new since April as well, but have been reading as much as I can since about last September. I've been extremely blessed with my good bees so far. Just be extremely careful when you open the hive. If there are queen cells, they could be in that sensitive phase. Just be careful not to bump or smash anything, and DO NOT flip the bar upside down for inspection. It could jostle a forming queen if there is one. Best of luck, and by all means, keep us up to date.

In the meantime, feel free to check out my YouTube videos. I go over all the perils I've faced and what I've learned along the way. Enjoy. http://www.youtube.com/user/tdbt3c/videos

[SRBrooks]

Tom:

I did watch some of your videos. Very interesting.

I just visited my weak hive again, and I don't know what to think. I couldn't find the queen (may go back tomorrow and search again). There was some fighting going on at the back of the hive when I took the TBH cover off---like chasing, leg biting, etc. (The dark coloring of one of the bees being attacked tells me she may be from my really strong hive.)

I moved the false back way forward so they'll have much less open space back there, but several bars left for comb-drawing.

There was hardly any capped brood, there were more entirely empty cells than I've seen before in that hive, but there was still a lot of honey.

Like last week, the entrance of the hive had little activity and few guards. Inside, however, the bees on the combs appear busy. There was a line of new comb being built in the next available top bar.

The hive population is down by about 70%. I saw no queen cells, I am sure of that.

I opened up the strong hive too. Mind-boggling strong.

Sondra

[Tom Brueggen]

Sondra,

Did you ever offer the bees a new bar of comb with eggs/larva in it, as Keefis suggested early on? I don't recall you ever saying that you did, or at least I didn't see it in the thread. Recall that every fertilized egg is only an egg for 3 days. Then, it hatches, and within 24-48 hours of being an infant larva, depending on what the bees feed it, it can become a queen or worker. You had mentioned that it had been 10 days or so since your last inspection when you discovered the collapsed comb. If it collapsed at the end of your last inspection, and killed the queen, by the next inspection, there would be no eggs left for the bees to raise to be a queen. Lets say it mortally wounded the queen, so she was still present enough to produce queen scent, but not strong enough to lay eggs. That is a scenario that can make a hive go helplessly queenless.

Sounds to me like the hive is getting pretty small, down to only 30%. You really need to keep an eye out for pests if you are going to continue with a low population. I've noticed in my strongest hive, that the bees tend to battle off the SHB's. But in my smaller nucs, the hive beetles seem less threatened. And last night I pulled a wax moth cocoon off the inside of a wooden window cover. That's the first I have seen any sign of wax moths in the actual hive. It was on the nuc that failed didn't raise a queen the first time, so I gave them a new bar of eggs. According to the calendar, she should hatch today or tomorrow I believe, at least assuming they raised one. I mentioned that I had spotted a queen cell cup, but I haven't been in the hive since to see if they have continued with it and capped it.

As for the new comb construction, the bees will still do this if there is a flow. As you said, mostly empty brood comb, but still plenty of honey stores. Even if queenless, the bees will still forage and stockpile food stores.

If at this point you still don't see signs of a queen, and you're down 70% in population, it may be best to consider combining. Good luck, and let us know how it goes!

[SRBrooks]

This may be a stupid question, but if I find absolutely no sign of a queen, wouldn't it be easier to get another queen?

No, I haven't moved any brood over from the strong hive. We've had severe thunderstorms, for one thing, and I was sure hoping to find the queen. If I don't find her tomorrow (weather permitting), I'll take decisive action.

Thanks for your time and advice.

Sondra

[Tom Brueggen]

This may be a stupid question, but if I find absolutely no sign of a queen, wouldn't it be easier to get another queen?

Not a stupid question, but a questionable proposition. Finding a new queen is not always that easy, unless you already have a lot of friends in the trade, and you know one that can toss you a quick queen. Me being cheap, the cost is often a deterrent. Really what's $20? But if I can do it myself for free I'll sure try. I wish I had a spare to send you, but I'm still working to get my splits all queenright. My next venture will be to raise a batch of queens, and use a mating nuc to see about actually getting them to a selling point. I don't expect to make money on it, I just want to make sure I can do it. But that's months out, so don't wait on me for a free queen! I'd like to have a mating nuc always available with a few spare queens, either for my own uses, or for situations like yours, so I can help a friend. I'm a long way from being a commercial queen breeder.

If you can find one for a reasonable price, go ahead and get one. But that is only if you are confident that the bees left in that hive will survive another +/-30 days until new brood starts hatching. Even then you'll have to feed since the newly hatched bees won't be of forager status. You are at 30% population, and that population has not had any young brood hatch in how long? What if you do this: recombine what you currently have (and be CAREFUL not to kill the other queen so we don't repeat the problem). Once the new hive has accepted everything, and the queen has laid in all the comb, then perhaps you can attempt to re-split. But I wouldn't do that unless you have secured a queen, so you don't have to go through the whole process of raising one again.

So going back to the beginning, when the comb collapsed. Did you ever remove all that from the hive? I know you had mentioned that other bars were pulling loose, and you didn't wish to disturb the hive, but what came of that? If a comb collapses, the bees (if possible) will still let the brood that is in it hatch. After that, they may or may not continue use of that comb, it just depends. But my thought was that there is a chance that the comb that collapsed, was the only comb with fertilized eggs laid in it (really bad luck if that was the case). If you pulled that comb out and pitched it, then the bees have no eggs with which to raise a queen. It's been long enough at this point, that if your bees were capable of raising a new queen, they should have by now. Or at least you would be seeing queen cells. When a hive goes queenless, they should start raising a new queen within 24 hours, and within 4 days you should see queen cups, if not sizable queen cells. I'm afraid you are past this, and they are not capable of raising their own.

I'd do one more inspection ASAP, and if NO queen cell cups or queen cells are present, you should immediately order a new queen, or recombine. I'm afraid at this point that your hive is just slowly dying off.

[SRBrooks]

I found the queen! And she is the original, marked queen.

I had left the collapsed comb way in the back of the hive, as it had a great deal of honey in it. Well, today it revealed it also had wax moths in it. I cleaned it all out and dumped it far away from the hive, in the woods. I saw no signs of wax moths elsewhere in the hive, but time will tell.

Again, there were numerous fights going on, and I'm positive that the intruders are from my super-strong hive, as the members are very dark and very small. I reduced the entrance in my weak hive by about 90%, and wouldn't you know it, the hive the guards then started full-scale attacks (as many as six bees at a time) when each robber arrived. I watched the entrance for about 15 minutes, and it was amazing how the behavior at the entrance had changed. I get the feeling that the hive simply couldn't attend to any business when there were so many intrusions.

I also moved the false back farther forward, so they'll have less space to defend.

No queen cells. Doesn't this also say, among other things, that the residents still have confidence in their queen???

When one of the robbers arrived at the entrance of the weak hive today, six bees ganged up on her and looked like they were biting at and vibrating her body for over a minute. I don't know how she was able to fly off, but she did. Didn't you mention something similar in one of your YouTube videos?

I'm so excited that Queen Elizabeth is alive!

Sondra

[mrobinson]

Yes, you do need to fairly-quickly "clean up the mess." Wax moths are an opportunistic pest, and they certainly make a big mess. A good rule of thumb is that if there's a chunk of wax that the bees can't get to very easily, moths can ... and, because the bees can't get to it very easily, the moths will probably be able to complete their life-cycle unchallenged. (Yuck!)

[SRBrooks]

Is there any chance that a full-blown infestation can be avoided? They were way in the back of the hive in the unused space. I'm hopeful now that the hive has a fighting chance to defend itself, period, that they will be able to defend against this also.

I've learned so much the last few weeks! Thanks for your input.

Sondra

[Tom Brueggen]

So after all that sweat, you had a queen all along...? And that's why we say it is crucial to look for signs of the queen, more than just looking for the queen. Was the queen hanging out in the pile of damaged comb? If she was back there all alone, that could have induced a lack of her pheromone in the brood nest, and prompted the mass drifting that you experienced. So is she still laying? You mentioned that your hive population was down 70%? Where did all the bees go? I know we assumed they moved to the other hive, your foragers perhaps, but they should have been getting steadily replaced by more brood hatching in the weak hive. I'm still concerned because you mentioned that upon last inspection there was hardly any capped brood.

How many bars of good comb do that have left? You can do some rough numbers running in your head to see if you think the hive is strong. I saw on here once that someone had figured up roughly how many cells should be on each side of a given bar, based on the bar dimensions and an assumed percentage of brood space vs honey/pollen space. Anyway, it will come with time, that you will be able to get a grasp on how much space the queen can keep filled with brood. Anything beyond that should be honey stores. So the question is, is your queen still keeping up. You said you saw hardly any capped brood, and mostly just open comb. Is that comb full of [hard to see] eggs? Or was the queen injured in the collapse, and has ceased laying?

As for the pests, SHB and WM, they will thrive where the bees cannot keep them out. The bees are focused on, and defensive of, their brood and stores. The stuff you shoved to the back of the hive, they probably don't care about anymore. They'll rob what they can out of it, and then abandon it. Then the varmints move in. I'm not real familiar with WM as I haven't had any big issues with them yet. But I did rip a WM cocoon out of a TBH on Monday night. It was outside the screen, but under the window cover, a space that the bees cannot effectively patrol. SHB are notorious for hiding out in cracks and crevices within the hive. Rule of thumb, if you can't eliminate a space enough to keep beetles out, then you must open it up enough that bees can get it.

There is a ton of learning involved with running a TBH, that is taken for granted. From what I've seen, for the average newby getting into beekeeping, a Lang really might be best, just because they are backed by over a century of fine tuning. TBH are not nearly as scientific, so a new beek must understand all of the maladies and be ready to battle them or correct them. These same maladies are perhaps not as much of a risk with Langs (a really good example is the SHB's that I have been battling in my TBH). I've been advised to pull my follower boards. The reason being that the bees cannot patrol the area behind the follower board, which makes it a haven for pests. Even if there is no food for the pests, it gives them a safe place to hide out where the bees cannot get to them.

The other real key to pest prevention is a strong hive. The moment the bees cannot keep up with the entire hive, portions of it will begin to fall victim to pests instead. There is big risk in making splits if the hive numbers are reduced but space is not reduced accordingly. Such is why your hive that had the comb collapse is at higher risk of pests. One because you left the pests that tasty pile of comb in the back of the hive. But also because the bulk majority of your bees drifted to the other hive, drastically cutting numbers, and defenses.

Good luck!

[SRBrooks]

With temps pushing 100, I wasn't willing to start breaking apart the bars and looking for the queen. I admit that.

The queen was never hanging out in the collapsed comb at the far end of the hive. I looked closely at the chunks of comb when I first discovered the collapse, and saw dead bees, a few leaves, and of course honey running all over the bottom of the hive. Today, however, as I mentioned, wax moths had moved into the collapsed comb.

I have about 7 bars of good-looking comb. I was surprised to see numerous cells that are empty, as in vacant space you can see clear through. So, yes, I believe the queen is not keeping up. She has plenty of room to lay, from what I can tell. Isn't it possible that the hive in general was so under attack and so demoralized that they couldn't take care of brood business, especially since so many mature residents apparently departed? They now appear much more able to defend, as least judging by the new activity at the entrance.

Aren't you a TBH keeper and a newbee? I don't really understand why you're recommending Langs for newbees. Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're saying. TBHs are just more in line with my way of thinking about bees, and it seems to be the same with you.

Thanks, as always, for your help.

Sondra