Well it means they took their "stuff" and split!

verb
past tense: absconded; past participle: absconded
leave hurriedly and secretly, typically to avoid detection of or arrest for an unlawful action such as theft.
"she absconded with the remaining thousand dollars"

Some will do it just because you irritate them. They do it because they are no longer happy with the accommodations at this particular bed and breakfast.

It is not a "normal" bee thing to do. It is rare in nature and should be rare in the hive.

They may leave because there is no food, too nosy of a beekeeper, noisy neighbors, overheating, foul (to the bees) odors, parasites, too much free rein by predators, or certain chemicals. Bees in a tree might leave because a bear is getting at them, the tree falls down, or humans encroach on their territory to build homes or waste dumps. If they are living in your hive... then likely you did something wrong, and they are taking their business elsewhere.

It's their way of telling you "It's not me, it's you!" "You are the bad roommate, and we can't take it anymore." It's a breakup and call it what you will, they are unfriending you on all the socials and ghosting you.

 

There are plenty of nits to pick if you get into word usage and grammar. Nobody here vaporizes oxalic acid but the term has stuck.

 

Lol, as a chemist, oxalic acid 'vaporization' drives me up the wall!

 

Well - speaking as a graduate organic chemist - what's wrong with that term ?
LJ

 

I think sometimes the abscond story is put forth when what actually transpired was that the bees succumbed to disease, mites, starvation, laying worker etc., dwindled, and individually flew off to die or robbed out. PPB might have been the main causative factor.

I guess in the case of overrun by wax moth or small hive beetle, the sorry lot of remaining bees would abandon the hive en masse but healthy colonies dont abandon ship without some reason. Maybe africanized are a different story.

 

Hey Frank,

what is it that Africanized bees do? Do you mind explaining?

thanks,
Thomas

 

Most societal groups that specialize in one thing or another, such as beekeepers, develop a particular terminology. Linguistic perfection is not a common trait. Slang on the other hand, and peculiar phrasing and words IS part of the
Terroir (/tɛˈrwɑːr/ if you will. After a time you get acclimated to what is meant.

Because this forum represents an international audience it gets a bit more complicated, and arguably, enriched. I have noticed several strong personalities here. Highly opinionated people are not something to run away from, rather I value their input because in the end we are all trying to find both our style of beekeeping and a perfection of practice. The science of beekeeping is, and will always be, a frontier. We have our moderators to keep the chickens herded. :lpf:

Enjoy the journey of discovery.

 

I think more like cats..or squirrels.

 

Re: vape. I beg to differ if we are using the wand then it is sublimation. But aren't all the everclear, glycerine, mineral oil di water and fog juice people actually vaping them? Or maybe they are fogging them.

 

SUBLIMATION - Thermopedia
[Search domain www.thermopedia.com/content/1163/] www.thermopedia.com/content/1163/
Sublimation, or volatization, is the process of changing from a solid phase to a gaseous one, without first forming a liquid.Sublimation is one type of vaporization (see Vapor-liquid equilibrium).As with evaporation, sublimation is possible within the whole range of temperatures T and pressures p over which the solid and gaseous phases coexist.

 

The target audience is not one of chemistry students, and therefore an esoteric definition is not appropriate. The term "vapourisation" as commonly used conveys a general understanding, in the sense of "a substance diffused or suspended in the air, especially one normally liquid or solid." - that's good enough, which is really all that matters.

It is quite true that sublimation takes place - but only very briefly - for as soon as the OA (in it's gaseous phase) leaves the heat source, it cools to below it's sublimation temperature and undergoes reverse sublimation (often called deposition) back into the solid state - only, as the OA molecules became widely separated during the gaseous phase, the resulting solid is then in the form of a micro-fine crystalline dust. And that's what actually enters the beehive.
LJ

 

"vapourisation"

Our favourite, ouriginal and genuine United Kingdoum beekeepour. :lpf:

 

"The target audience is not one of chemistry students, and therefore an esoteric definition is not appropriate."

Oh quit being so sensitive. We are all here to learn.

 

I do declare, I just about get a case of the vapors every time I try to sublimate. (wait for it):

Alex

 

And in true Southern fashion I respond, "That's nice."

 

I'm glad I was finished with my "cofeffee" else I would be cleaning my screen.

Alex

 

Nah, "Bless his heart" is too mild in this instance. I am going straight for the jugular.

 

I 'gas' the girls with my OA wand. When I gassed my daughter's hive my SIL asked what that meant I told him I was 'fumigating' them. As a gardener and forester he knows what that means, so I didn't have to bother defining the beeks' terminology.

 

well back to the thread...
Abscond is in general, when you go out to the hive after who knows how long could be a few days or a few months, and Viola, the bees are gone.
As most keepers cannot fathom they did something wrong, the presumption is the bees just up and left.

the actual happenings and the timing can be several reasons, or different things.

GG

 

This is kind of what I am getting at. To me it seems that absconding implies that the bees are doing something wrong. I was just curious what the biological term would be for when bees in nature might do this. Someone mentioned this is rare in nature, but I can imagine some situations where this would occur naturally.

 

I have only had one instance where I could not trace an empty hive back to something I did or did not do. I am pretty sure that PPB was the still the cause, just not clear as to which aspect. Absconding is a really nice way of saying died, unless we are talking about a colony that has not yet established itself. So the question is not so much "why did my bees leave' as much as 'how did I kill them".

 

The term “hatch” or “born” are not accurate, so I always used the term “emerge” to describe the arrival of a fully developed bee after the pupa stage. Only recently I learned the correct term is “eclose”. I doubt it will ever achieve widespread use, but it is nice to have descriptive terms recognized by all.

 

Eclose. intransitive verb. [no object]Entomology. (of an insect) emerge as an adult from the pupa or as a larva from the egg. 'some larvae pupated and eclosed substantially earlier than average'

I feel smarter already. Thanks for the info. Whether we start using it or not remains to be seen.

 

FYI I was a literature major, that is probably why I like to think about the words we use. I'm also a non-conformist, so I seldom do things just because everyone else says so.

For example, whenever people ask me how to questions about beekeeping I usually say something like, well I can explain to you how it is done by 99% of beekeepers, but I actually don't do it that way....

 

While I was not a literature major, I grew up reading a lot of books and no TV.
Later, working in engineering I had a war of words going with another engineer- Great fun!! the objective was to insult the other with words requiring them to go get a dictionary. My co-worker later declared me the winner when I called him "pusillanimous dreck". Simple language meaning; Lacking courage; cowardly.
Lacking strength and firmness of mind; wanting in courage and fortitude; being of weak courage; faint-hearted; mean-spirited; cowardly, and trash or dung.

This co-worker/friend was actually very bright and not at all what I called him. The war of words was just a thing to brighten our day. I am not trying to fuss over word meanings here particularly, just trying to get some clarity for communication purposes. Certainly fuming, vaporizing, sublimation, mean generally the same thing.

Back to absconding.....I wonder about a hive that swarms, and with several swarm cells, re-swarms, perhaps weakening the hive. Do the bees maybe chew out some honey cells to load up before swarming? Could this trigger a robbing event because the hive is weakened? Could this hive then die out as a result? The bees reason for absconding is probably a diversified set of conditions. I would guess the majority can be squarely laid at the feet of the BK's management practices.

I really appreciate y'all.

 

Even though the term abscond is used, bees don't actually take off in mass for a new hive unless they are swarming. In a swarm a large part of the population will remain behind along with the queen cells. In the literal sense of absconding, where the bees up and move to new digs, packages and freshly caught swarms will abscond, but not an established colony. When an established colony collapses we may say it absconded, but the collapse is a true collapse, usually due to disease, usually disease that was spread by varroa. Varroa infect the pupae, so the emerging bees are infected, and soon most of the hive is infected. One of the defense mechanisms bees have evolved is that sick bees leave the hive and fly off rather than spread the disease to the community. Some of the common viruses also affect the bees cognition, in which case an ever increasing number of them fail to find their way back home. The colony population rapidly depletes over a couple of days until there aren't enough bees left to sustain the hive and it collapses. The beekeeper who checks periodically doesn't notice anything is wrong at first until it seems to him as if the hive is suddenly empty, even though the bees did not just get up and move to a new home, instead they flew off and died because they were sick.

 

No AHB here either so pure speculation. But I would bet it would look like the hive got meaner, lots of dead bees on the bottom board, and more bees than you remember in the hive. Do not know if they rwmove the larvae of the usurped hive. Maybe someone else knows?

 

As to the Usurp.
I have seen 2 instances, not in real time just the results.
Several years ago I did a "walk away " split, as it turned out the queen was at the old location and there was a fairly big drift back (50% ish)
I found Q cells and a smallish split 9 days after the split, maybe 4 frames of bees. I added a super as I was thre had one left and the circumstance had the space in my car used for something else on the way back home.
forward 15 days, i go back to verify a queen hatched and do a check, and I see bearding. I do the WTH and proceed to open and check. Hive is full of bees and needs space and has brood being sealed, So 3 or 4 days post my visit a swarm moved in.

Next was I think a 1 off. Had a couple hives with queen that were almost black sold as Russian Hybrids, 2012 ish I had caught a swarm with a older looking gold colored Italian Queen. One day I open this hive and the golden queen is gone and a young Virgin "Black" queen is running around, later started laying and was a good queen.
I thought this odd, Untill 3 hive later I open one of the Black queen hive to find 3 supercedure cells opened. That queen was not originally marked.
I at that point assumed the returning Virgin "got lost" made it into the other hive, or was chased out by another and just joined, eventually taking over the hive.

In Both cases I only seen the results after a few days.

SO IMO scouts for a swarm would consider a week / Queen less hive as a HOME, only need to over come the current owners and move in.
And should a hive allow a virgin in they may soome have her as the Queen. I would think it somewhat the same as tossing a virgin in.

GG

 

Usurpation: I had a small colony earlier this year, from a small split I made. They were fine, but hadn’t built up yet. Still in the bottom box.
One day I heard a roar in the bee yard and went out to investigate. It looked like a herd of robbers attacking this hive, so I went to get some equipment. By the time I got back, it was clear that this was not robbers-there were tons of bees plastered all over the front of the hive-a swarm! They were fanning around the opening and lots more bees were landing out of the air and funneling into the hive.
The funny thing was that many of these new bees arrived carrying pollen. And they kept bringing in pollen for days, way more than the surrounding hives.
The next day I put another box on and checked things out. Everything looked good, tons of bees, and the hive has built up very nicely this summer.