# Why do bees abscond



## rw3212 (Apr 8, 2008)

I had 2 new hives, splits from older, larger hives. They both were queenright, but not building real well. I was offering sugar water and pollen sub, although there is a good flow goin on. They didn't seem interested in foraging though. 

Monday I went thru all the hives looking for queens / egge (some other hives were working queen cells) and both these had queens with larva. 

Today, no bees, larve or stores. The only thing left was the wax.

I had this problem last year too, so I am doing something it seems, but have no idea what. No SHB and mite count was low on parent hives.

HELP!!!


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## BEES4U (Oct 10, 2007)

*Why do bees abscond ?*

Locally it is caused by Argentine ants.
Ernie


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## tecumseh (Apr 26, 2005)

rw3212 writes:
I was offering sugar water and pollen sub, although there is a good flow goin on. They didn't seem interested in foraging though. 

tecumseh:
the first question I would ask is how were they taking up the sugar water and pollen. if they took it up slowly (or you used frame feeder and you found numbers of dead bodies in the feeder on a regular bases) the first thing that would cross my mind is nosema.

the classical reason for european bees to abscond is starvation. if you are feeding in some quantity??? this should not be the cause. nosema acts to shorten the life of the worker bees (life span reduced by about half) and the individual bees will leave the hive to die which after a fairly short time can look like absconding.


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## rw3212 (Apr 8, 2008)

tecumseh said:


> tecumseh:
> the first question I would ask is how were they taking up the sugar water and pollen. if they took it up slowly (or you used frame feeder and you found numbers of dead bodies in the feeder on a regular bases) the first thing that would cross my mind is nosema.
> 
> the classical reason for european bees to abscond is starvation. if you are feeding in some quantity??? this should not be the cause. nosema acts to shorten the life of the worker bees (life span reduced by about half) and the individual bees will leave the hive to die which after a fairly short time can look like absconding.


They were not taking either the syrup or pollen sub enough to notice. I just had them on because the bee count was low. They had stores of both the last time I checked, but when I found them gone so was all the stores. They also had larva both capped and uncapped the other day too. It was all gone when they left.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Did you leave your splits in the yard in which you made them? If so, I wonder, since you mentioned the small number of bees, if what you actually saw as activity and little of that was actually your splits being robbed by the parent colonies.

In all my years of beekeeping I've never seen a colony that absconded. Since you had this problem two years in a row, I'd suspect that you are doing something wrong. Otherwise I'm sure you are a fine beekeeper.

But I do tend to blame the beekeeper. Myself included. If I get a good crop or if most of my splits are successful, I take the credit. If the crop is poor or my splits don't do well, I take the blame for that too. Which doesn't stop me from trying again.

W/out more info, figuring out what went wrong in this case is like trying to diagnose AFB w/out holding the frame in ones hands and seeing the hive itself. So, what more can you tell us about what you did and when you did what?


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## Kieck (Dec 2, 2005)

Sounds like robbing problems to me, too.


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## Countryboy (Feb 15, 2009)

_They had stores of both the last time I checked, but when I found them gone so was all the stores. _

And how recently did you check them?

Are these splits you made last fall, right before winter? Are these splits you made a month ago?

I don't know how much stores they had, but robbers wont strip a hive in 10 minutes. If the hives were robbed out in a very short time, I'd be setting out a pan with honey in it, and then beelining the bees that show up.


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## Kieck (Dec 2, 2005)

Something more than simple absconding seems to be at play in this case. On Monday, May 12, the hives have adult bees, larvae, and stores. The next day (Tuesday, May 13), all of the above are gone.

Absconding bees do not take larvae with them.

And larvae cannot complete pupation overnight.

Therefore, something else must have happened to the larvae.

My guess is that these hives were very small, and could be robbed out quickly. I wonder if the frequency of opening the hives and going through the broodnest may be contributing to the absconding/robbing problem.


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## rw3212 (Apr 8, 2008)

*More info....*

Let me try to expand a little...

I had the split in a 5 frame nuk with a jar feeder and an enpty 5 frame super above the brood area. The split was from a hive about 60 miles away and brought here to the house so I could feed as needed.

On the 12th The split was about 2 weeks old, I was checking to be sure laying was happening. At that time there was some pollen and nector stored in 2 frames, little capped. There was both capped and uncapped brood on 2 adjoining frames. All 5 frame were drawn, except the outside of the 2 wall frames. The 2 frame side with brood were about all the bees that I saw in the hive (near noon).

On the 13th, I opened the cover to check the syrup level and notice there were no bees visible in the brood area. I started looking deeper and that is when I discovered that everything except the wax was gone.

As I mentioned before, This is the 4th time in 2 years that this has happened. Every time everything disappears. I know that bees swarm and sometimes they die, but this baffles me as to EVERTHING going at once. I have a fire ant problem in my yard. Grandkids can't play out due to the bites. Could they be robbing everything including larva?


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## Coon (Dec 4, 2008)

i put a ring of grease around the bottom of the hivestands to stop the ants


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## beehive (Jan 3, 2009)

did someone take your bees and replace them with clean frames?


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## Jer733 (Oct 5, 2008)

*Beehive*

I thought the same thing about theft when they are all gone one day later.

Can you tell if these are your frames in the box?


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## rw3212 (Apr 8, 2008)

*stolen frame...*

No I don't think so, These frames were mediums with black foundation, the same as all my brood boxes. They look like mine and are drawn the same as the ones I had seen before.


I have tried the oil bath thing aroung the stand legs and the ants form a corpse bridge across it. Seems they float when linked together. I had though they would sink into the oil. I use wal-mart brand veg oil, in cut off milk jugs. So far the only control I have had any luck with is rock salt, but it has to be reapplied about weekly. I don't know that the ants would pack off nector and larva, seems that they would either take sweet or protien but not both.


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## Gene Weitzel (Dec 6, 2005)

The colony was probably too weak to fend off the invading ants, so the bees took all the honey/nectar and absconded, leaving the larvae to be cleaned out by the ants. They will do the same thing if the SHB get ahead of them.


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## no1cowboy (May 18, 2007)

> I thought the same thing about theft when they are all gone one day later.
> 
> Can you tell if these are your frames in the box?


I too had this thought, maybe you could mark your frames in some way so you can tell the next time this happens.


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## rw3212 (Apr 8, 2008)

*marking frames*

Well now, my wife likes woodburning, so maybe I have a project for her...she also likes the bees, but is allergic to the pollens (all pollens it seems). Can't be out this time of year.

We live right on a heavy trafficed road (2 lane + turn lane), the bees are only about 100 ft from the road. There is a 2 track train line right across the road, and another small street and a subdivision just beyond that. We are NOT in the boonies here. Most of my bees are on a farm about 60 miles away. The only ones here are weak ones that may need help. So if they are here, they were/are stressed. I understand that given the situation, I will loose one occasionally, but to loose everything overnight just baffles me. 

After reading all the comments, I am leaning toward the colony being too weak to fend off the ant attacks. I also will take steps to protect from theft though, as that is a possibility.

Thank you to all who responded. If you have anymore thought, I'm listening.


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## tecumseh (Apr 26, 2005)

as far as a fire ant shield is concerned.... I have found a ring of axle grease on a hive stands legs is a good deal more effective that oil in a can simply because the smear of grease is not effected so much by rain.

I would suggest that it typically requires much longer than a day for ants to clean out a hive.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

rw3212 said:


> I have a fire ant problem in my yard. Grandkids can't play out due to the bites. Could they be robbing everything including larva?


I believe so. This could be your problem.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

rw3212 said:


> I use wal-mart brand veg oil, in cut off milk jugs.


I've always heard that motor oil is the thing to use, not vegetable oil.


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## Tom G. Laury (May 24, 2008)

*Absconding*

Ants are certainly capable of driving bees from their combs, stores, brood, and so on seemingly overnight,devour brood and honey afterward. I am acquainted with the Argentine that Ernie Lucas mentioned. They form a network, a supercolony as it is known, consisting of multiple queens and huge numbers of cooperating workers. Small, black and form trails inches wide in summer & fall. Worse than Varroa!


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## notaclue (Jun 30, 2005)

I agree with tecumseh about the grease. I use FGMO around the painted base (don't have grease) and that keeps ants away. A friend told me about using vaseline around trees to keep the web worms off the trees.

I first thought it may have been wasp or hornet raids late in the day that may have run them off. But that was first thought...


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