# Survivor Hive



## Nordak (Jun 17, 2016)

I got a call today from a former co-worker who informed me his grandfather was passing away and he wanted me to have his grandfather's hive.

A little background- I visited this hive 4 years ago when I first started beekeeping and was amazed at what I saw. It was an old survivor hive, untreated and basically left to its own devices. The only thing the grandpa really ever did was harvest from the top deep. At the time, I asked the grandpa if I could set up a swarm trap around his place, but he didn't really say anything and seemed suspicious of me, so I let it go. It's strange how life works sometimes. I figured I'd probably never see this hive again. I feel badly about the circumstances under which I am receiving the hive, but am glad the bees will be under my care. According to the grandson, he said the hive has been occupied consecutively for the last 8 years, and guessed longer than that the way his grandpa described. I go get them on Tuesday.


----------



## dtrooster (Apr 4, 2016)

:thumbsup:


----------



## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

Wonderful!


----------



## Fusion_power (Jan 14, 2005)

New boxes are in order. I would watch them carefully for a year and see what their potential is compared to your other colonies. That they are alive is a positive, but there are other traits needed to be productive.


----------



## Nordak (Jun 17, 2016)

Yeah, my plan as of right now is to smoke them out of the top deep and give the grandson the honey. The bottom deep frames are essentially welded together in a mass of propolis. The box itself seems structurally sound. I would destroy the hive if I tried getting the frames out. My only option really is to let them expand out of it. It will be interesting to see how similar/dissimilar they are by comparison. I have a feeling they are probably a lot like what I have now given the relatively close distance away from home.


----------



## Scott Gough (Dec 10, 2015)

I would be really tempted to just leave the bottom box alone for as long as they survive and as long as the box holds together (not try and get them out of it). Just take honey from the top box and leave the bottom alone. Why mess up a good thing. 

We as beekeeper tend to want the boxes to all look good and arrange things like we like it not how they like it. (At least I am guilty of this at times.) They have it arranged how they like it so let it ride. 

Congratulations and good luck.


----------



## Nordak (Jun 17, 2016)

Thanks Scott. I'm in no hurry to get them out of there. I'll most likely leave them in there for this year anyway.


----------



## Beehumble79 (Apr 4, 2017)

I've read a couple of these posts recently and can't help but wonder....why mess with what's working? That advice blows my mind. I think the original poster (congrats on this gift by the way) has the right idea. Leave them alone as much as possible and just super off of the top. If you want to make splits just don't use a excluder. Leave them bee....


----------



## Nordak (Jun 17, 2016)

> why mess with what's working?


I agree. I almost don't want to move them but I got the impression the family wanted them moved. What I found interesting was the lack of SHB under the cover. Didn't see a single beetle.


----------



## Beehumble79 (Apr 4, 2017)

Nordak said:


> I agree. I almost don't want to move them but I got the impression the family wanted them moved. What I found interesting was the lack of SHB under the cover. Didn't see a single beetle.


I'd feel the same way but I definitely don't mean to not even touch/take the hive. Just that I would be as hands off as possible as it pertains to the "keeping" of those bees. 

I hear ya on the shb. I have one hive that there are NONE inside and the other always has several grouped on the inner cover. I'm learning to dislike them already.


----------



## whiskers (Aug 28, 2011)

This topic, bees untouched for years, major cross comb, propolis, etc., comes up often enough that I have begun to wonder if what we perceive as utter disorder isn't somehow a defence for the bees. If you are afraid of collapse you could sheath the outside of those boxes with more wood (plywood?) that you glue and/or screw to the outside as reinforcement. This could be done where they sit now.
Bill


----------



## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Any chance we can get a hold of some open mated daughter queens from the graft? I would move them just before the sunset after all the foragers have returned to the hive. If the family want them out of there then you have to act fast otherwise they will give it away to someone else thinking that you don't want to move them. Looks like the top cover needs to be replaced. The hive boxes are still in good condition. Survivor hive also need the survivor drones locally in order to complete the survival traits. So somewhere there in the DCAs they have the survivor drones too. The bands on the worker bees look like what I have now. Mine are still fighting the mites off treatment going 2 seasons already. Forget about the honey harvest for now. Focus on making the daughter queens to multiply and spread the survivor genetic is more valuable.


----------



## Nordak (Jun 17, 2016)

whiskers said:


> This topic, bees untouched for years, major cross comb, propolis, etc., comes up often enough that I have begun to wonder if what we perceive as utter disorder isn't somehow a defence for the bees. If you are afraid of collapse you could sheath the outside of those boxes with more wood (plywood?) that you glue and/or screw to the outside as reinforcement. This could be done where they sit now.
> Bill


You may be on to something regarding bees and how they build their environment unperturbed. They may very well know something we don't. 

As far as the boxes go, they seem fairly sound structurally. I am going to screw plywood to the bottom for transport, so that should help keep it together. I'll have some scrap plywood to work with onsite if needed. 



beepro said:


> Any chance we can get a hold of some open mated daughter queens from the graft? I would move them just before the sunset after all the foragers have returned to the hive. If the family want them out of there then you have to act fast otherwise they will give it away to someone else thinking that you don't want to move them. Looks like the top cover needs to be replaced. The hive boxes are still in good condition. Survivor hive also need the survivor drones locally in order to complete the survival traits. So somewhere there in the DCAs they have the survivor drones too. The bands on the worker bees look like what I have now. Mine are still fighting the mites off treatment going 2 seasons already. Forget about the honey harvest for now. Focus on making the daughter queens to multiply and spread the survivor genetic is more valuable.


Anyone who knows me knows I don't make honey a priority. I like honey well enough, but in some regards to me it's the thing that gets in the way of beekeeping. I leave it if I can, harvest if I must. 

As far as grafting, first things first. I gotta get them home and building comb in the boxes I intend to grow them in. We'll see how it goes. I have a feeling, like I said earlier, these are pretty much like the bees I have already. They certainly look the part.


----------



## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

Move them to be at home with you, Nordak.
Try to disturb them as few as possible.

Observe them. They could be an enrichment to your genetics.
Don´t be too hasty deciding what to do with them.


----------



## Nordak (Jun 17, 2016)

SiWolKe said:


> Move them to be at home with you, Nordak.
> Try to disturb them as few as possible.
> 
> Observe them. They could be an enrichment to your genetics.
> Don´t be too hasty deciding what to do with them.


:thumbsup:

I'll report back and update once they are here.


----------



## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

Nordak said:


> I'll report back and update once they are here.


Please do!
If they were mine I would let them adapt to the new situation for one season and see how they survive winter.
Time then to decide how to go on.
I hope you may use the boxes. Seems like very good microorganism being present.


----------



## Nordak (Jun 17, 2016)

Got them home. Very gentle bees. Wearing a veil and short sleeves, received no stings. Maybe they can teach my bees some manners. Mine aren't bad, but this hive was amazingly easy going. If indeed they turn out to be the survivors they appear to be, I will be making queens from them. My thinking for now is to see how they do for the remainder of the year and focus on them next year. I'm not going to force anything as I think that would do more harm than good.


----------



## Riverderwent (May 23, 2013)

Was there any brood in the top box?


----------



## Nordak (Jun 17, 2016)

No, as far as I could tell it was all honey or close enough to it. I didn't try to seperate the frames. It probably weighed close to 60 lbs. The grandson said he saw the bees swarm, so I'm guessing they backfilled while queenless. Hopefully they are queenright. They seem like they are. We'll see.


----------



## Riverderwent (May 23, 2013)

You've got some folks here that are anxious for you to make increase from that queen's genes. You're the one there sizing up the situation, and I'm confidant that you will handle it appropriately. Having said that, I would encourage you to conservatively make some splits and increase from that hive. Once you get two or three descendants going, you can aggressively make more increase.


----------



## Nordak (Jun 17, 2016)

David, it's funny you mention that. The hive tried to make increase for me today. It was the funniest thing, I am using a 10 frame medium as a temporary stand. It has a solid bottom nailed to it and is inverted so that the hive sits on the bottom. There is a 3/4" hole bored in the box. I came outside to check the hive only to see bees circling like crazy overhead. Upon further inspection, I notice bees piling into the 3/4" hole underneath the hive. Sure enough, they swarmed...right into the "hive stand." I shook these bees into a TBH with some open brood. They were a small softball sized cluster. Virgin queen I'm guessing by the looks of her. Though she doesn't really act like it if that makes sense.

Here's the bad part. Earlier in the day I had cut out some TBH comb for frames above the survivor hive. Well, there was open honey on the floor of the TBH nuc that I forgot about when I was cutting comb. Not much, but it didn't take much. I come back out to check on the swarm and it's pandemonium. A huge robbing scene. The little cluster had broken apart and I found the queen with a group of maybe 20 bees back in the medium "hive stand." Bees are now all over the survivor hive trying to get in as well. It was at this point I basically move the TBH nuc far far away to get robbed out and throw a robber screen over the survivor hive. I had a recently queenless mating nuc, so I decided to see what would happen if I tried to intro the little queen. I placed her gingerly on the face of a comb and watched her walk around for a good 10 minutes. No aggression whatsoever from the mating nuc bees. Many were attempting to feed her. It was a gamble, but given the circumstances, it was all I could think of doing at the time. I'm still second guessing myself. I might end up breaking the hive's survivor streak after one day. Not feeling like much of a beekeeper today.


----------



## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

Riverderwent said:


> You've got some folks here that are anxious for you to make increase from that queen's genes.


Here´s one. I would make some grafts right away, just as an insurance. 

Makes me more interested to take that trip to south eastern USA one day...

There was similar incident in Finland maybe 15 years ago, the lower box had started to rotten and the hive was slanting and sinking into grund. The beekeeper who saved them was not treatment free but I remember he took some grafts and even sended some daughters to MTT ( Finnish Agricultural Research Center). The bees were very mean and not varroa resistant. BUT: Nobody had been monitoring this hive on a regular basis, so it might have been a recent swarm in it.


----------



## Nordak (Jun 17, 2016)

Assuming the queen I caught today will remain unscathed, it would be fairly easy to graft from her. The problem with taking grafts from the deep is the frames are literally welded in with propolis. If the queen makes it, I'll make some grafts. One problem I'm having is equipment and space constraints. I can work around those though. My one acre yard is quickly becoming one big bee sanctuary.


----------



## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

> I might end up breaking the hive's survivor streak after one day.


Sad. I hope they accept her and you might safe them. Good luck.
To use empty frames would have be a better idea perhaps.



> The bees were very mean and not varroa resistant. BUT: Nobody had been monitoring this hive on a regular basis, so it might have been a recent swarm in it.


If I ever were in that situation I would isolate them from my bees and check them first for one season. Leaving them alone entirely. Why are we always so hasty? 
Are we so desperate now to discover better stock?


----------



## Riverderwent (May 23, 2013)

Nordak said:


> The problem with taking grafts from the deep is the frames are literally welded in with propolis.


If you add a box without using a queen excluder and have a frame of empty drawn comb in the middle of the upper box, you may get some brood that you can get to pretty easily for splits or grafting.


----------



## Nordak (Jun 17, 2016)

> To use empty frames would have be a better idea perhaps.


It's sort of a Catch 22. Empty frames right now wouldn't do much. There just isn't much blooming right now, hence the robbing. If I feed sugar, I run a similar risk. The mistake I made was leaving a drop or two of open honey in the floor of the nuc. Complete oversight. Normally I'd think of something like that, but I didn't keep my cool. I left the bars cracked for residual bees to find their way in and paid for it. I would like to know what bees are robbing as this hasn't been a problem in the past. If I find out, I'll be getting rid of that queen.


----------



## Nordak (Jun 17, 2016)

Riverderwent said:


> If you add a box without using a queen excluder and have a frame of empty drawn comb in the middle of the upper box, you may get some brood that you can get to pretty easily for splits or grafting.


Hey David. That's exactly what I did with the TBH comb I cut out. That was my thinking as well. Gave them empty comb in the middle skirted by honey. My response was mainly toward Juhani's immediate grafting comment. 

For some reason, I get the nagging feeling that this was a small supersedure swarm today. Just a hunch.


----------



## Riverderwent (May 23, 2013)

> Why are we always so hasty?


If the bees are worth multiplying, we really don't need to rush things. They will be there next year. Most folks who have been keeping bees for awhile have made problems for ourselves at one time or another by getting in a hurry.


----------



## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

When I was new before I have no patience when it comes to the bees. Everything is in a hurry to get done that includes releasing
the new bought queen and end up getting her killed. Impatience to released the new queen that she flew away right next to the nuc hive.
That was my newbee mistakes back then. Now, I take the time to do things to make sure it is done right. Had made so much mistakes over the years on what not to do to mess things up again. We should post a thread on the little details mistake we should pay attention to on the different areas of beekeeping. Even then we still make careless mistakes from time to time. 
Now let's let this hive settle down. And then decide what to do next after the first winter. If they are meant to stay then they will.


----------



## Nordak (Jun 17, 2016)

I'm not touching the survivor hive for a good long while. They have what they need to get through dearth. I'll leave entrance reduced and robber screen in place. We'll see if they're queenright later. If the queen in the nuc survives this ordeal and ends up laying, this whole catastrophe could end up working in my favor. At the end of the day, I'm just a guy with too many bees that are surviving pretty darn well despite my mistakes. Hopefully these bees will get going and make even more bees I don't need.


----------



## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

Nordak said:


> There just isn't much blooming right now, hence the robbing.I would like to know what bees are robbing as this hasn't been a problem in the past. If I find out, I'll be getting rid of that queen.


That´s contrasting, why kill a queen in a hive doing the natural thing? They used their chance to provide. And who knows which part of hive decides this? The workers or the queen?



> We should post a thread on the little details mistake we should pay attention to on the different areas of beekeeping.


Yes we should. But I really fear the comments from uncivilized people.


----------



## Nordak (Jun 17, 2016)

> That´s contrasting, why kill a queen in a hive doing the natural thing?


To me it's selection. It's not advantageous to me as a beekeeper to keep bees with a propensity to rob. It's disruptive and unneeded. Same as if I have overly aggressive bees. That's natural for bees as well. I try and select against it.


----------



## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

Ok, and does it change with shifting the queen?
I never thought this was a trait, if I´m honest.


----------



## Nordak (Jun 17, 2016)

I would say it absolutely is, yes. Some bees show a much greater propensity toward robbing. Previously, I have not had this problem. I think I can narrow it down to a couple of candidates and will keep my eye on them.


----------



## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

Thanks Nordak. I have to watch this. I have one AMM hybrid colony which robbed in early spring. And robbing really can be a great disadvantage to mite infestation from outside.


----------



## Nordak (Jun 17, 2016)

SiWolKe said:


> Thanks Nordak. I have to watch this. I have one AMM hybrid colony which robbed in early spring. And robbing really can be a great disadvantage to mite infestation from outside.


The mite transfer is another good reason to select against it. Good point.


----------



## Nordak (Jun 17, 2016)

Alright, because stuff like this keeps me up at night and I value sleep, I couldn't help but peek into the mating nuc to check on the queen. Sure enough, on the last bar, there she is. Whether she is mated or not, we'll find out in a couple of weeks.


----------



## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

:lpf:......

well done. rest.


----------



## Riverderwent (May 23, 2013)

Nordak said:


> Hopefully these bees will get going and make even more bees I don't need.


: ) +1


----------

