Quote Rainbowgardener: " We still don't know for sure exactly what combination of influences is killing off the bees,"
I keep bees too. I have been keeping bees since 1973, The equipment lasts for a long time, the bees come and go.
Weather, disease, mites, all take their toll. In order to keep any bees alive it has become necessary to treat for the
mites and medicate for disease. Those meds and treatments must be removed prior to adding honey supers so
that junk doesn't get in the honey.
Have a great day!
Yes we just split and inspected our hives. One is requeening. One we split and kept the old queen. She makes good brood and the bees are docile. The second hive we split, we could not find the queen. So we are going to let part of the split make a new queen from the brood and we had an extra queen for the other half of the split.
Our swarm hive from last year has been going downhill for a couple of months. We have not seen brood but the other team reported seeing a queen cell. Again we saw no larvae and only drone cells. We think we only have a laying worker so the hive was dying. We shook the bees out and took the hive away. One of the frames was slimed from hive beetles. Too few bees to defend the honey. The bees were left to beg their way into another hive. The empty boxes will be frozen to kill any hive beetles that may still be in the box.
We treated the hives a couple of months ago. We treat with MAQ's so they don't make the honey taste bad. We treat every three or four months. We haven't seen many mites since we treat regularly but the hive beetles don't stay away very long. We have oil trap on multiple levels of the supers. When there aren't many bees we reduce the number of boxes and frames so it is easier for the hives to defend. We have also given the weaker hives more brood frames to help them get more bees. We were planning on combining the swarm hive with another but since we would not be able to identify the laying worker, we decided to remove the hive and let the bees try to beg their way into another hive. It was that or they would eventually die off on their own.
This way there would be a chance that some of the bees might be accepted by the another hive.
Last year we combined two weak hives by killing one of the queens and putting newspaper between the boxes so they would have a chance to get used to each others smell.
Because of our mild weather and the garden always has something in bloom, the bees do some foraging all year. They still kick the drones out and the forage is limited, but we can rob honey every three months or so. We don't have a lot of hives so the harvest is small, but we don't want to leave a lot of honey in the supers once they are ready because the honey attracts the hive beetles.
Our swarm hive from last year has been going downhill for a couple of months. We have not seen brood but the other team reported seeing a queen cell. Again we saw no larvae and only drone cells. We think we only have a laying worker so the hive was dying. We shook the bees out and took the hive away. One of the frames was slimed from hive beetles. Too few bees to defend the honey. The bees were left to beg their way into another hive. The empty boxes will be frozen to kill any hive beetles that may still be in the box.
We treated the hives a couple of months ago. We treat with MAQ's so they don't make the honey taste bad. We treat every three or four months. We haven't seen many mites since we treat regularly but the hive beetles don't stay away very long. We have oil trap on multiple levels of the supers. When there aren't many bees we reduce the number of boxes and frames so it is easier for the hives to defend. We have also given the weaker hives more brood frames to help them get more bees. We were planning on combining the swarm hive with another but since we would not be able to identify the laying worker, we decided to remove the hive and let the bees try to beg their way into another hive. It was that or they would eventually die off on their own.
This way there would be a chance that some of the bees might be accepted by the another hive.
Last year we combined two weak hives by killing one of the queens and putting newspaper between the boxes so they would have a chance to get used to each others smell.
Because of our mild weather and the garden always has something in bloom, the bees do some foraging all year. They still kick the drones out and the forage is limited, but we can rob honey every three months or so. We don't have a lot of hives so the harvest is small, but we don't want to leave a lot of honey in the supers once they are ready because the honey attracts the hive beetles.
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jal_ut
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"Because of our mild weather and the garden always has something in bloom, the bees do some foraging all year. "
Interesting! Here we have May, June, July and August. The rest of the year is too cool for the bees to do much. They will come out for a cleansing flight any time the temp gets above 50 degrees. Supers are added early June, or when the bees are getting crowded, and pulled late august. Here the clover and alfalfa bloom are the big honey producers. Since it takes a box of honey to feed the bees through winter and they are apt to die anyway, I have taken to robbing the honey and buying new packages in the Spring. A box of honey is worth $360 and a package in the spring costs $90.
Interesting! Here we have May, June, July and August. The rest of the year is too cool for the bees to do much. They will come out for a cleansing flight any time the temp gets above 50 degrees. Supers are added early June, or when the bees are getting crowded, and pulled late august. Here the clover and alfalfa bloom are the big honey producers. Since it takes a box of honey to feed the bees through winter and they are apt to die anyway, I have taken to robbing the honey and buying new packages in the Spring. A box of honey is worth $360 and a package in the spring costs $90.
Where winters are cold bees hibernate. Beekeepers feed their hives to keep them going. In cold winter areas there is not much to forage on. Most beekeepers cannot raid their hives past August.
We usually can harvest in April soon after the honey flow starts, July, November, and around January. When the citrus and fruit orchard bloom the honey is pale and has the citrus notes. In November, the honey has is dark and has a lot of bark. Last April the honey crystalized very fast and was turbid because of the unusually dry winter and warm weather. The bees were more active although there weren't many choices for flowers. Basil and bottlebrush mostly. I deliberately left the basil in flower longer for the bees and cut it back after the other flowers started blooming. We did have winter corn and when it was tasseling the bees were all over the pollen. That made them very happy. They liked the sunflowers, cosmos, and onions when they bloom around Feb-March.
We get queens locally, but it is hard to nearly impossible to get bees imported. After the varoa mite and hive beetle arrived after 2011 many places had no bees at all. My yard used to have a bee an inch and I went down to 1 bee. They have made a comeback mainly from managed hives and a campaign to get people to stop using harmful chemicals and go natural or if they have to use chemicals to remove any buds a couple of days before spraying and use the least toxic chemical they can that will get the job done and to avoid using long term systemics like imodicloprid.
More people are interested in beekeeping, but there are still people who would just as soon kill a hive that tries to squat in their yard. Most beekeepers who want swarms are willing to go out and get them, but it is better before they settle in to a permanent home. By the time they call somebody, the homeowner has sprayed them with chemicals making them useless to the beekeeper. Then they do charge for bee removal, since they would have no way to save the bees and have to kill them instead.
We usually can harvest in April soon after the honey flow starts, July, November, and around January. When the citrus and fruit orchard bloom the honey is pale and has the citrus notes. In November, the honey has is dark and has a lot of bark. Last April the honey crystalized very fast and was turbid because of the unusually dry winter and warm weather. The bees were more active although there weren't many choices for flowers. Basil and bottlebrush mostly. I deliberately left the basil in flower longer for the bees and cut it back after the other flowers started blooming. We did have winter corn and when it was tasseling the bees were all over the pollen. That made them very happy. They liked the sunflowers, cosmos, and onions when they bloom around Feb-March.
We get queens locally, but it is hard to nearly impossible to get bees imported. After the varoa mite and hive beetle arrived after 2011 many places had no bees at all. My yard used to have a bee an inch and I went down to 1 bee. They have made a comeback mainly from managed hives and a campaign to get people to stop using harmful chemicals and go natural or if they have to use chemicals to remove any buds a couple of days before spraying and use the least toxic chemical they can that will get the job done and to avoid using long term systemics like imodicloprid.
More people are interested in beekeeping, but there are still people who would just as soon kill a hive that tries to squat in their yard. Most beekeepers who want swarms are willing to go out and get them, but it is better before they settle in to a permanent home. By the time they call somebody, the homeowner has sprayed them with chemicals making them useless to the beekeeper. Then they do charge for bee removal, since they would have no way to save the bees and have to kill them instead.
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rainbowgardener
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rainbowgardener
- Super Green Thumb
- Posts: 25279
- Joined: Sun Feb 15, 2009 6:04 pm
- Location: TN/GA 7b
Not necessarily. Sometimes bees have died when there is an unseasonably warm winter. When it is colder, they stay more dormant. When it is warmer, they are more active and eat more. So they need more honey to keep them alive through the winter. I guess the beekeeper could provide that. They won't be able to provide it for themselves unless the greenhouse is also full of nectaring flowers.Gary350 wrote:Would it help the bees to keep the hives inside a green house all winter to help keep the bees warm in cold weather when the sun is up?
Even the best beekeepers will lose hives. Queens live a couple of years and are usually replaced when they no longer produce or when they die. A queenless hive will try to make a new queen if they have brood that is the right age. Still the new queen does not have it easy. She has to kill or fight off her rivals and take a mating flight. Her own hive will not let a virgin queen back in until she has collected enough sperm. During th flight she could be killed by predators or by accident. Beekeepers usually want to make sure they have quality queens that produce docile bees. If the bees are aggressive, they usually replace the queen. Queens can be accidentally killed during hive insepections. Usually when we do hive inspections, we try to avoid the queen and inspect the frames on the periphery. We only look for evidence of a queen, brood, eggs, and larvae as well as an abundance of bees. The only times we actually look for the queen is for teaching purposes, when we are requeening with a gentle queen, or when we do splits since we have to make sure where the queen is. Queens that don't lay well or hives under duress from mites and hive beetles get weaker. Even with MAQ treatments they don't alway survive. Despite our best efforts to divide the hives in time, the hives will swarm before we can complete the split. If a swarm cannot find a new home within a week, it will usually die as they only have the honey they consumed when they left the original hive. Most people requeen when they capture a swarm because the old queen leaves with the swarm while the old hive raises a new one. Since you don't know how old the old queen is, she may not last that long so it is better after capturing a swarm to requeen. During the fall the drones are kicked out and the bees forage less. In colder climates there is less forage. bees that in summer usually only live about a month will live longer so they need fewer replacements and there are usually fewer bees in the colony. Even if the queen keeps laying, the workers control how many new bees are produced. If there is less forage and limited honey stores, the workers will kill larvae to control the population. When you have a warm winter like the last one, the bees wake up too soon and there isn't enough forage so unless the beekeepers feed them, they starve.
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jal_ut
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"Would it help the bees to keep the hives inside a green house all winter to help keep the bees warm in cold weather when the sun is up?"
I don't know how this would work. The bees would come out and fly around the greenhouse anytime the temperature was above 50 degrees. They would work any flowers present, but I don't think they would get enough to feed themselves from this. They would need to be fed. Bees kept outdoors in the summer will range up to two miles looking for goodies. That puts thousands of acres at their disposal.
I don't know how this would work. The bees would come out and fly around the greenhouse anytime the temperature was above 50 degrees. They would work any flowers present, but I don't think they would get enough to feed themselves from this. They would need to be fed. Bees kept outdoors in the summer will range up to two miles looking for goodies. That puts thousands of acres at their disposal.
