Joined
·
214 Posts
Last May I got a nuc in an 8 frame medium. Our nectar flow wasn't great last year, so I fed syrup in the fall and kept sugar cakes on the hive over winter. They survived, and early on this year were bringing in honey and pollen. The first week of April I removed the lower box, which only had empty comb. I put on a feeder atop the hive, and they eventually took about two quarts of syrup but stopped taking it. Mid April I added a third box on top to keep up with the honey flow. Then we had quite a bit of rain, and it was a couple of weeks before I checked again.
The hive had two dead bees on the bottom board, and two dead bees clinging on the bottom of one frame. All the honey
was gone from the frames. There was no tell-tale sign of robbing (lots of cappings on the bottom board and roughly chewed cells). There were no queen cells or cups. Just looks like the bees took all their honey and left. There were no wax moth larvae (so I guess I caught it early) and less than a half-dozen SHB larvae on the bottom board. The comb all appears undamaged. There were no scratch marks or other signs on the exterior of the hive being molested.
It really is a mystery to me why an established hive would abscond this early in the year. Does anyone have any similar experience or ideas? A couple of years ago SHBs were really bad here, and I had three hives abscond, but there was no doubt about the reason why: the SHBs had made a mess of things and taken over. This hive now just looks like a bunch of frames of drawn comb that I had stored away.
The hive had two dead bees on the bottom board, and two dead bees clinging on the bottom of one frame. All the honey
was gone from the frames. There was no tell-tale sign of robbing (lots of cappings on the bottom board and roughly chewed cells). There were no queen cells or cups. Just looks like the bees took all their honey and left. There were no wax moth larvae (so I guess I caught it early) and less than a half-dozen SHB larvae on the bottom board. The comb all appears undamaged. There were no scratch marks or other signs on the exterior of the hive being molested.
It really is a mystery to me why an established hive would abscond this early in the year. Does anyone have any similar experience or ideas? A couple of years ago SHBs were really bad here, and I had three hives abscond, but there was no doubt about the reason why: the SHBs had made a mess of things and taken over. This hive now just looks like a bunch of frames of drawn comb that I had stored away.