# Why wont they grow?



## mathesonequip (Jul 9, 2012)

your location and natural bee behavior is the answer. as the summer goes on brood production cuts back, not a lot with italian type bees, complete shut down with russian type bees, they all slow down. as fall approaches all slow down. when it is hot and dry they slow down. when there is less or nothing coming in they all slow down. you may be able to stimulate them some with pollen substitute and a slow but steady feeding program. the type of queen is often an issue also with shut down problems. individual hives vary but this slow-down season starting. spring is expansion time. extra wax on un-drawn foundation helps. in general wood frames are easier to get drawn than plastic but plastic is ok.


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## JWChesnut (Jul 31, 2013)

Matheson has the correct answer. In my region of California, hive population quickly drops after the Toyon flow ends (this year in very early July). Its the summer dearth, and the bees are in survival, not growth mode. You can stimulate them with feed, but this generates an unstable population dynamic, as well as robbing and ant problems. 

The aim is to get summer colonies to a stable population base (which I define as about 15,000 bees). Oversize colonies can be cut-down split (with introduced queens) and undersized colonies can be boosted up (with combines and strategic feed).

A 15K colony (about 2 boxes) will shrink further into winter, but if healthy (ie. no mites) will grow quickly in the Southern California spring (starting in late December or early January). A smaller colony will often blink out in November. A larger colony will often go through a "mite crash" in October, or swarm out in the fall swarm season.

My region has a "fall flow" in late August and September, and then a hard dearth in October - November. You want the colonies resilient for the hard dearth. Sized up, but not too large, in September. Italian bees can eat themselves into starvation in October. 

A "right sized" colony has fewer fall mite problems than a "boomer" with thousands of drones that are ejected on the 21th of September, leaving ravenous mite daughters behind in every drone cell.


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

Are you feeding sugar syrup from an internal feeder?

Have you done regular sticky boards or a sugar roll (different procedure from a sugar dusting done for mite suppression) to get a fix on your current mite counts? Sugar dusting doesn't provide an accurate infestation rate - it can't be intensive enough as the bees are not removed from the comb during the process.

As I recall you are using foundationless frames, right? Hive you tried adding a wax-foundation frame, or an extra-waxed plastic foundation frame instead to see if that makes a difference? Interleaving new frames with brood frames might be an issue. Adding them only at the side would be better, less disturbance to the brood nest area. Sugar dusting over open larvae can be fatal to them which would have been eating away at your population numbers.

Did you see the queen at the last inspection, or absent that, eggs and very young larvae?

I have read that sometimes VSH queens can be unsatisfactory layers, but I have no personal experience to offer on that as all mine are home-made mutts. Italians as a strain (VSH or not) are reputed to be sensitive to a slow down in forage, which I would think would be happening, even in irrigated suburbia as the SoCal weather would be the driver and press reports show continued hot and very dry conditions in general. Perhaps this is just a normal situation. I would call your queen supplier and see what she/he says about the performance of queens right now.

OTOH, while the lack of build-up that you report would cause great concern here in NY as we are looking at only a few months more before winter sets in, in your year-round growing season (I haven't forgotten that you have _plumeria_ in your garden) it may just be the seasonal norm. Local beekeepers, living near you will have the answer to that.

I would do a sugar roll to rule mites in or out as possible current issue as soon as possible. Examine your brood pattern. Check with the queen-breeder and call around to local beeks before concluding that you have a major problem.

A failure to thrive colony is a frustrating puzzle, so I'm hoping you get an answer soon.

Enj.


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

There's a difference between a dearth, not a dearth, a flow, and a flow they'll draw wax on. This time of year, w/o a super strong flow, bees will tend to not draw new comb, they want to store as much as they can in the space available. If you want them to expand, you need to feed them and give them drawn comb.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

sounds like non coddler's options are to feed and assume the associated risks or let them be. is her colony of somewhat less that 2 eight frame mediums big enough to overwinter for the area?

if you decide to let them be nc, i would suggest reconsolidating the frames to remove the empty spaces.


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## mathesonequip (Jul 9, 2012)

i thought about this some more. high mite levels will also slow a hive down. it is not just the mites but the viruses problems that go with mites. i was at a bee meeting recently that had an amish beginner with a hive not doing well, he assured us that he did not have many mites, he never saw more than 1 per bee... in our area 3 or 4% this time of year, that is 3 or 4 total mites per 100 bees are up in the do something different range. it is not the mites but the viruses that follow that are the problem, many of these viruses do not show physical symptoms. this is something else to consider.


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## JWChesnut (Jul 31, 2013)

I had a VSH queen I kept in an observation hive (five frame Ulster style) cause the colony just wouldn't grow. The VSH trait really eats into the ability of some colonies to expand. 

Many so-called dinks are also just really mite-ridden, get rid of the mites and the colonies explode.

Then there are genuine dinks, especially feral bees (so sought after in the TF world) just don't have the "oomph" to grow very fast.

The well adapted bees in Southern Cal are in shut down mode now, yup you can wake them up with sugar and some sub, but every robber bee for a five mile radius will be at the entrance to your hive in exactly 5 minutes.

I trucked a queen bank to a friends place this afternoon to help her install a queen in her first split. We pulled the cage, and went to work her bees. Fifteen minutes later I was back at my truck (sugar clean except for the bank box) and the queen bank was surrounded by fifty zillion bees all trying to get inside. More bees than in her entire backyard apiary, even if you counted drones. Truly mad house scene.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

JWChesnut said:


> The well adapted bees in Southern Cal are in shut down mode now, yup you can wake them up with sugar and some sub, but every robber bee for a five mile radius will be at the entrance to your hive in exactly 5 minutes.


so what advice if any can you offer the op regarding this colony given its current status?


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## Riverderwent (May 23, 2013)

JWChesnut said:


> The VSH trait really eats into the ability of some colonies to expand.


Yep.


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## JWChesnut (Jul 31, 2013)

squarepeg said:


> so what advice if any can you offer the op regarding this colony given its current status?


Advice? "You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear". Keep them alive until February, and let them grow when nectar rich flowers actually exist in southern California.

The foraging range of a colony is thousands of acres -- when it hasn't rained in months, you just don't have nectar in sufficient volume across those thousands of acres to generate a growth spurt.

Southern California has strict climate imperatives, one of which is you build your comb in the springtime.


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## Fusion_power (Jan 14, 2005)

> The foraging range of a colony is thousands of acres


A radius of 2 miles gives just over 8000 acres that bees will forage. Under some conditions, they will forage up to 7 miles from the hive which is about 100,000 acres.

I agree that bees should build up at the appropriate time for the area, but it is possible with judicious use of feed to get them to build up outside the normal time.


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## JWChesnut (Jul 31, 2013)

Fusion_power said:


> A radius of 2 miles gives just over 8000 acres that bees will forage. Under some conditions, they will forage up to 7 miles from the hive which is about 100,000 acres.
> 
> I agree that bees should build up at the appropriate time for the area, but it is possible with judicious use of feed to get them to build up outside the normal time.


And it is very important to absorb the lesson of the inverse corollary of the "home range" measure. Bees (like all wild animals) are not "triathletes" deriving emotional satisfaction from flying to edge of exhaustion. They forage over thousands of acres because they need that amount of pasture to sustain their colony. They act because they must. Hence, in a landscape dry as a bone, and ready to catch wildfire from the smoulder of a piece of broken glass acting like a magnifying glass, bees are hungry beyond measure. 

A parallel exists in the known natural history of the Asian Apis Cerana and the africanized race. These swarm 6-8 times per year, the corollary: they swarm because their population survival demands it. Hence: the oft repeated claim that Apis cerana is living in pastoral harmony with Varroa is likely pure romanticism. These bees are in a race for survival, only winning through promiscuity that damages their own colonies longevity.


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## mathesonequip (Jul 9, 2012)

JWChesnut said:


> And it is very important to absorb the lesson of the inverse corollary of the "home range" measure. Bees (like all wild animals) are not "triathletes" deriving emotional satisfaction from flying to edge of exhaustion. They forage over thousands of acres because they need that amount of pasture to sustain their colony. They act because they must. Hence, in a landscape dry as a bone, and ready to catch wildfire from the smoulder of a piece of broken glass acting like a magnifying glass, bees are hungry beyond measure.
> 
> A parallel exists in the known natural history of the Asian Apis Cerana and the africanized race. These swarm 6-8 times per year, the corollary: they swarm because their population survival demands it. Hence: the oft repeated claim that Apis cerana is living in pastoral harmony with Varroa is likely pure romanticism. These bees are in a race for survival, only winning through promiscuity that damages their own colonies longevity.


a good train of thought to consider.


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## diymom (Apr 8, 2016)

Jw chestnut, i have considered and i agree that the africanized bees tendency to swarm constantly is likely to avert colony death by varroa but i know several beekeepers with those feral genetics who dont experience colony loss through swarming. I think there are colonies out there who have figured out how to maintain their numbers around here at least. Also, there are those massive africanized colonies in the southwest like in arizona that negate the swarm until they dwindle to nothing theory. 
Bees are like people, the colonies are so individual and unique.

So i get it now, i didn't know drawing comb was a spring thing, it has been especially hot and dry the last month and i expect it to continue for a few more months. Its just with so much irrigated landscape i didn't expect failure to build. Like there are five acres of blooming iceplant around my neighborhood and lots of buckwheat which is blooming now.

I admit, i expected to have a larger colony by now, i am sure they will maintain without my intervention, but i will keep a close eye on them. There is a ton of capped brood and i have seen my queen laying, she isnt shy and she is so consistent.
I really hope that they can build next year to acheive a good size.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

:thumbsup:


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## JWChesnut (Jul 31, 2013)

diymom said:


> There is a ton of capped brood and i have seen my queen laying, she isnt shy and she is so consistent.


There's your answer why they are not drawing comb. Raising brood is incredibly resource intensive. If bees are in brood raising frenzy they neglect all the other needs of the colony. Every spare calorie and morsel of protein is going into brood production, everything else is left to whither.


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## JWChesnut (Jul 31, 2013)

diymom said:


> I think there are colonies out there who have figured out how to maintain their numbers around here at least. Also, there are those massive africanized colonies in the southwest like in arizona that negate the swarm until they dwindle to nothing theory.


You completely miss the point. The fecundity of a population matches (over evolutionary time scale), the colony death rate. The alternative is extinction (where death > birth), or the "rabbits in Australia" population over-expansion (where birth > death). Populations quickly evolve to life history where birth == death. This is because evolution selects for homeostasis. The key word is "populations", not individual colonies. If African bees have been evolutionarily selected for 1) frequent swarming, 2) maintaining reserve queens in the hive, we can predict with certainty that the death rate against which those traits were selected is much greater than in a population which does not express those traits.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

diymom said:


> Anything i can do to help them grow?
> 
> non coddler


Depends on your definition of "coddle".


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

To supplement them with a source of good protein so that the
excess might go into drawing the comb, put 2 lbs. of the patty subs
in the hive now. This is how I get my bees to draw out the new comb
in our summer dearth here. The queen is actively laying and raising the
new broods too. Also don't forget about Lauri's sugar bricks too. Make some
for the hive also to supplement feed along with the patty subs. Without supplemental
feeding they soon will eat their broods if nothing is available during the summer dearth.


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