[oregonbeek]

I just checked my hives today and one of my hives went broodless!

I don't know what happened.

July 3rd the hive was in perfect condition with capped brood and everything.

July 14 I inspected the hive and don't remember checking for larva or anthing, just that the hive was drawing out wax really well and looked ready for a honey super.

July 21 I took out the feeder and placed a honey super on the hive.

July 28 I checked the honey super and noticed that they didn't even touch it so I considered taking the super off and refeeding again.

Today, August 5th I checked the hive and found it nearly broodless and also saw a hatched/empty queen cell! And it also looked like there may have been a few more queen cells as well that had hatched.

I can't believe I missed this going on in my hive!

The overall population of the hive looked to be down a bit, maybe by 20% or so. Most of the frames are beautifully drawn out with honey framing the empty brood portions in the middle of the frames. There ARE probably 50-100 remaining capped brood in the hive scattered through the rest of the frames. I watched the thickest portion of the capped brood and saw a bee emerging. I also noticed at least one, maybe more queen cells that had hatched.

What is going on in my hive?

I figure my best case scenario is that the queen hatched and is off mating and will come back tomorrow and start laying eggs. Is that even possible? Is the hive too far gone for saving?

I know I'm supposed to keep feeding the hive a new frame of brood each week to keep the numbers up but I only have two hives and can't really do that while my other hive is fairly weak as well. We are apparently in a dearth so I've started feeding back up pretty heavily.

I assume that they simply didn't stop laying because of the dearth because wouldn't they have to lay SOMETHING? There's not one fresh capped larva or uncapped brood in the entire hive. And why would they make a new queen if not out of emergency? And a swarming hive would keep laying brood right? And it's not like they just left because there are still a lot of bees and tons of capped honey.

And here's another bummer, I'm going to be gone from tomorrow morning until the 16th so I can't next day myself a queen until the 17th or 18th.

Does the hive have a chance at all?

 

[oregonbeek]

A swarm!? Aww, that's a bummer. I hope there IS a new queen in there getting ready to do some hard core laying... And I hope there are enough nurse bees to keep things going. I'm really surprised that they would have swarmed honestly. They were new this year and I think that they had plenty of room to grow. And I would have assumed that it was too late in the year to swarm. I'm new to this though, so we'll see. Hmm... Too bad I wouldn't have caught it!

I suppose this puts a dent in my honey plans for this year

I pulled the honey super off, added a sugar feeder back in the hive and now my plan is to check the hive again at the earliest date that I can... the 16th.

 

[oregonbeek]

It appears that you were feeding until July 21. Summer feeding can create problems like this.

Uh oh, what does summer feeding do? Cause swarms or something?

I read in a variety of places that you can feed until they stop taking it, or to feed a new package until they draw out a lot of comb, or until you put a honey super on.

And it's actually the hive that I stopped feeding that is having this problem.

I feel like this is going to be one of those things that falls under the old axiom: ask 4 beekers a question and you'll get 5 answers...

If you had even the most rudimentary knowledge you would understand what happened to your hive. Get some knowledge!

Oh cruel condescension... What happened then? I had plenty of reasons to doubt that they were swarming. I figured a dead queen, for whatever reason, was just as likely.

In the meantime, RELAX! Your bees most likely have the situation well under control.

I hope so. A 98% broodless hive doesn't bolster the old confidence.

 

[oregonbeek]

Thanks for the helpful post Steve! I really appreciate it! I can't wait to go check it again when I get back from vacation. I will feel a lot better if I get back and see some fresh brood in the frames of course!

I love the 5 year old's comment! Sometimes kids have more common sense than we do!

 

[oregonbeek]

Yep, it was a new nuc this year. I would have been surprised to see my brand new hive swarm already.

 

[oregonbeek]

I guess I wouldn't have expected my new hive to swarm. I'm still not 100% convinced my queen didn't die for whatever reason.

A few details have been left out of the original post.
1. where were the queen cells in relation to the frames...how many...did you knock them down?
2. how many queen cells
3. in the brood boxes, how much of the frames had full honey and pollen and how much had capped brood
4. Now at this time in the brood boxes is there space for the new queen to lay eggs? Have they started to back fill the brood nest with honey?

1-2.) The queen cell I saw was on the bottom of one of the middle frames in the upper deep. I only noticed 1-2 queen cells but I didn't inspect every inch of the frames so there could have been another 1-2 maybe.

3.) All that hive now consists of is 2 brood boxes essentially... I'm running 2 10 frame double deeps. If lack of room caused them to swarm then I'm placing the blame on plastic frames because my bees absolutely hate drawing wax on the plastic frames. They draw comb everywhere but on the frames. (yea I know some people have ok luck with plastic but my bees loath them and love wax... which I discovered too late). Probably 10-14 of the 20 frames in the hive were very nicely drawn out with brood cells surrounded by pollen and honey. Only maybe 100 cells of capped brood remained, and those had bees emerging when I inspected them.

4.) They did not backfill and there was plenty of room for eggs.

Fishstix is right! You need knowledge...you lack the knowledge to know what is going on in your hive....start reading

I hope that's sarcasm lol. I've read books and watched infinite videos but had a specific question which you largely just answered! Thank you!

...Otherwise, other than to arrogantly puff yourself up for being a beegod, I see no reason to put someone down for not knowing something on a forum. People come here to ask questions. No harm in that I hope! Especially with beekeeping where there are 10 ways to do everything. Maybe they should extend the classic saying to "When you ask 9 beekeepers a question you get 10 answers and one person telling you you are stupid for asking the question." :doh:


Thanks for the note HobbyBeek! I hope to have a report up either Monday night or Tuesday night! And I hope to see plenty of brood!

 

[oregonbeek]

Thanks again everyone for all of your help! I really do appreciate everyone's input!

Update:

I went out to the hives today and did a quick inspection (I only had 20 minutes). The hive that is broodless still appeared to not have any visible brood. I did see bees bringing pollen into the hive which I found surpising and initially encouraging because I read somewhere on here that bees bringing pollen into the hive is a sign that there is brood in the hive. But I went straight to the core of the hive, inspected a few frames, and didn't see any brood. I DO believe though that I saw tiny little eggs in some of the empty brood cells that I inspected very closely. I don't know if this means that my workers have started laying or what... I've been broodless for awhile so perhaps my workers are laying. But from the eggs I did see, it looked as though there was only one per cell and they were on the bottom of the cell and not the sides as worker bees would be doing... if I've done my homework correctly.

As per some of the suggestions in this thread, I still think that the bees in that hive are acting a bit weird, possibly running around a bit aimless like some have mentioned?

I had REALLY hoped to see brood or even capped brood by now in that hive but I didn't see hide nor hair of larva, let alone capped brood. Maybe there is a queen that just started laying today or yesterday or something... who knows. I'm not sure what to think at this point with that hive...

And then I checked the other hive, the one that hadn't been doing as well initially, and that hive is just going along great! Beautiful brood and everything... perhaps I should move a frame of their brood into the other hive?

Now a very noobie question: If I do move a frame of brood from the strong hive to the new hive, should I brush the worker bees off? Or does it matter if they make the trip with the brood?

 

[oregonbeek]

Thanks honeyshack. I'm still holding on the the glimmer of hope that there's a queen in that hive just waiting to build up some bees for the winter... I'll check again in a few days. But I think you're probably right and will at least hold off on adding a frame of brood until I know more.

That is really frusterating knowing that that hive wouldn't stand any chance at all going into the winter without a queen though :s I'd definitely pay the cost of having a queen shipped here if I knew it was going to do any good.

 

[oregonbeek]

Well HobbyBeek I'm dying to know how your hive is now because I just went out yesterday morning and found capped brood in the problem hive! I absolutely couldn't believe it. I went out there expecthing the worst, pulled out the absolute center frame in the hive and found capped brood and lots of uncapped brood. Obviously this raised my spirits a lot and assume that my worst case scenario is that the brood are drones (because the workers started laying). But they didn't look like drone cells so I'm hoping everything is ok! Of course this absolutely dashed any hopes I had of getting honey out of this hive this year but the other hive is looking great so I tossed a honey super on that hive as kind of a long shot attempt at some fall honey. Our area gets a super heavy flow late in the year and in the past few years we've had some commercial beekeepers come out in August/September with their hives for awhile to take advantage of our late flows.