# Empty hive



## Drew-NY (May 1, 2016)

It's the middle of winter here in Upstate NY although the weather has been mild. I drove out to the beeyard to check on the girls and found the hive nearly empty, no survivors. There is about a quarter cup of dead bees on the bottom screen, and about five dead bees clinging to frames. The brood frames are stuffed with pollen and the supers are full of honey, untouched. They must have left the hive in the late fall after I got everything set up for winter. Mouse guard in place and no evidence of damage or pests.

I took two medium supers off the top hoping to salvage them. A few of the frames have a light dusting of what looks like mold on the cappings that might wash off.

Any ideas for what went wrong?

-Andrew


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

was there much frass (guanine) in the brood comb?

it's not likely that they left in in the fall, but rather gradually dwindled as the dying bees flew away.

it's most likely varroa mites, with queen failure coming in as a strong second.

fortunately for you and any nearby colonies it sounds like the hive did not get robbed out.


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## Andrew Dewey (Aug 23, 2005)

I agree with Squarepeg.

There are lots of people discovering dead hives right about now. Many were either philosophically opposed to or lackadaisical about applying varroa treatments & doing mite counts.


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## wildbranch2007 (Dec 3, 2008)

did you treat for mites? the scat they are talking about, go to the bottom of this article and it will tell you and show you pictures of how to find it.

http://scientificbeekeeping.com/first-year-care-for-your-nuc/

try going here there are links to help you diagnose your problem presented by nybeewellness.

http://nybeewellness.org/diagnostics/

some questions for you so you can look at it successfully. did you treat, look for old queen cells can indicate late swarm, one note, many people are finding dead outs even when they treated with no indication of there being mites or swarms.


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## Vance G (Jan 6, 2011)

The honey is fine, extract and eat or sell to buy new bees and decide what you are going to do in the future to control varroa mites.


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## mathesonequip (Jul 9, 2012)

all of the above is correct. the mites had to be under control last august. high mite populations mean virus problems and short-life sick bees going into winter. this is not a good plan for northern areas or anywhere else.


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## WesternWilson (Jul 18, 2012)

Drew, how strong was the hive going into winter? Small colonies really struggle to keep warm enough in the kind of cold weather you have had this year. Nosema is also a possibility.

The mold on the cappings will not trouble a strong colony, they will clean it off. But it suggests you hive may have failed in fall, when it was still warm enough for mold to grow. The most likely cause of that is queen loss sometime in the late summer/early fall.

Such a pity, but we have all been there. Hope 2017 gives you a better ride!


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## Drew-NY (May 1, 2016)

I just got back from looking at the hive again. I did see evidence of the white droppings in some of the cells and about eight to ten adults that failed to emerge. This was only in the second brood box, not in the bottom. There are no queen cells present. Over the summer and fall when I separated the boxes it always broke open brood cells between the frames and I looked closely at the pupae for varroa and never saw any. Poked them with the hive tool to check all around. Never saw any K-wing or shriveled wings. Any time I spilled nectar or honey on the top bars the workers lined up to lick it clean and I never saw varroa on them while they were sitting still for me. I didn't add up the pounds of honey I harvested but I thought it was real good. Still, the evidence above points to varroa. No, I didn't treat for it. 

I didn't think of it until I got home but I should have brought a handful of dead bees home and checked them for tracheal mites.

WesternWilson, hive strength may have been a problem. I was honey bound for a while and threw two mediums of foundation on top to try to fix it. The bottom brood box has a significant amount of pollen in the brood space so maybe the queen had nowhere to lay. Still, I was surprised to see so few bees in the hive, like they abandoned it.

Next question: I have an empty hive with three medium brood boxes of pollen and honey in the brood space that would have been eaten up over the winter. When I buy a nuc in the spring will the bees clean out the cells and use it for brood again? What do I do with them? Right now they're OK out in the cold but when spring comes I'll have to get bees in there as soon as possible or have ugly moldy frames to deal with.


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## wildbranch2007 (Dec 3, 2008)

It seems that the long easy previous winter caused all kinds of mite problems, I didn't see any deformed wing, I treat, and I'm finding hives dying from mites that had low counts in the fall. If you didn't find old queen cells, they may not have swarmed, but when mite counts are high they sometimes swarm without starting one. 
The new bees aren't going to clean out the honey except as they need it, so they may not use it up as fast as the queen is laying, my solution would be to get two nucs instead of one, and split up the honey. You can leave the hives like they are in the cold, or if you have some place to store them inside once they are frozen, in the spring when it warms up, unless you seal them up, other bees may find them and rob them out, which would solve your honey bound condition, but if SHB find them first you could be in trouble.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

when i find the lower part of the hive plugged out with pollen and honey like that i usually also find the colony is either queenless or has a failed queen. 

i would think that in new york there would be no reason for the colony not be using all that pollen and nectar coming in to make brood with. you interpreted the plugged out brood chamber as the queen running out of room to lay. another interpretation is that the queen was failed or perhaps injured during a previous inspection, and so the colony wasn't able to use those resources and simply stored them. 

when was the last time you saw a good pattern of brood and eggs in the hive? did those few cells of capped brood you found have domed caps suggesting drone eggs laid in worker cells?

if you had to look very hard to find only a few specks of frass, and if you were not able to find any mites after looking at dozens of broken open drone cells, and given the fact that excess pollen and nectar became accumulated in the brood chamber, i'm leaning toward queen failure with the gradual dwindling of the population due to aging


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

There could be a missing queen when you winter wrap the hive that time.
A hive can go down quickly without a laying queen to replenish the hive with small winter
bee patch. Mites could be the secondary reason though.


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## mathesonequip (Jul 9, 2012)

the missing queen idea sounds good BUT, the queen would have to be missing since before winter build up in mid to late august. brood production slows down or nearly stops in the fall. if you had a queen in august then early winter failure is almost certainly mite related. in warm areas the winter build up would shift into september but the normal old bee death would also shift toward late winter.


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## WesternWilson (Jul 18, 2012)

Drew, whatever happened, looks like you are starting fresh in the spring. You can freeze the honey/pollen frames now and give them (thawed) to your new colonies in the spring. But. In case disease took the bees down, why not just harvest the honey and start fresh? Disinfect all the boxes/bottoms/tops as best you can, use new frames and foundation.

Meanwhile, can you get a mentor from your local club out to do a hive post mortem with you? That may help you when you go to formulate your approach to 2017's bees, and may clear up the issue of whether it looks safe to feed the new bees the honey from this deadout.


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## wildbranch2007 (Dec 3, 2008)

http://syracusebeekeepers.com/


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## Drew-NY (May 1, 2016)

Thanks everybody for your help with this. I'm hearing two possibilities. Queen trouble and varroa. I'm hesitant to use the term deadout because of the lack of dead bees. It's not that they died in the hive, they're just plain gone. I admit I didn't get down to the brood box as often as I should have. I worked a ton of overtime and some days I was putting the telescoping cover back on almost in the dark. I'll see if I can get one of the guys from the bee club to come out and have a look.

Squarepeg asked about domed tops on the few remaining capped brood in the second box and no, they were standard flat caps. Good color, no smell.

Thanks again.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

Drew-NY said:


> ... they were standard flat caps.


in that case you most likely had a laying queen.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Drew-NY said:


> Over the summer and fall when I separated the boxes it always broke open brood cells between the frames and I looked closely at the pupae for varroa and never saw any


Take some time and look at Randy Oliver's website, scientificbeekeeping.com for advice on objective mite testing methods. 

I did a demonstration last year where I had 15 beekeepers take apart a living hive...all the way down to the bottom board....all 15 challenged to find mites. They found one. I then proved to them that there were thousands of mites in that hive.


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## WesternWilson (Jul 18, 2012)

The fact you had worker brood left, capped, suggests you had a catastrophic event, leaving brood with not enough worker bees to care for it.

It is very hard to be certain without looking at the frames and remaining evidence, but finding no bees does not mean they flew away. The hive may have lost its queen suddenly and just dwindled away as bees aged out. It may have endured a robbing event in which it lost its queen and a lot of its bees. Maybe disease or Varroasis drove the dwindling. Foragers often clean up the dead bees outside the hive ie. mice, wasps and rats...and sometimes even the dead inside the hive.

From what you describe, some old dead bees on the bottom board, a few plucky survivors dead on the comb, I think the most likely explanation is that this colony was not strong in late summer....poor queen, Varroasis, disease, hunger??? Any and all of those may have contributed. In fall the older bees aged out and died, there were not a lot of winter bees on hand, and finally only a few were left. Then the cold weather finished them off.

The old adage, that you begin your winter prep in spring, is truth. You want to be sure that in mid summer, the colony is doing really, really well. Big population, nice stores, decent brood amounts coming along (feeding to support that if you have a late summer dearth). Your aim is to have them raise a nice big crop of healthy winter bees in Aug/Sept, raised with no Varroa pressure on the brood, and go into winter with a nice big cluster, healthy queen and stores, especially honey over the broodnest.

As I say, start fresh in spring, find a mentor meanwhile. Most of us were fortunate to have generous mentoring in our first few years, it can make all the difference.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

when you guys are looking things over use a tweezers to uncap and remove what worker brood was left, looking for deformed wings, stunted abdomens, ect.


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## wildbranch2007 (Dec 3, 2008)

even though you only had 1/4 cup of bees left, try doing an alcohol was with them and count the mites.
we are finding higher mite counts in dead out than we had after they were treated, suggesting mite bombs went off in this area, but not all yards are affected. If all of the beeks in an area treated, those yards are normal.

Randy O will show you how to do it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CF0X8_Yun9Y


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## mathesonequip (Jul 9, 2012)

as the hives die down the mites often get more concentrated. do you mite counts before the end spiral. control the mites before there is a bad problem.


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## wildbranch2007 (Dec 3, 2008)

mathesonequip said:


> as the hives die down the mites often get more concentrated. do you mite counts before the end spiral. control the mites before there is a bad problem.


that's one of the questions that I have asked, you have any references? I have looked but haven't found any. It would make logical sense, but during the winter, when the bees can't fly, most of the dead bees land on the bottom board, the mites end up on the bees and on the bottom board, unless many of the bees left the hive the % wouldn't change, would it?


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## mathesonequip (Jul 9, 2012)

wildbranch2007 said:


> that's one of the questions that I have asked, you have any references? I have looked but haven't found any. It would make logical sense, but during the winter, when the bees can't fly, most of the dead bees land on the bottom board, the mites end up on the bees and on the bottom board, unless many of the bees left the hive the % wouldn't change, would it?


 i got this from discussion during the ny beewellnees training a couple of years ago. in august as the bee population slows down about twice the mite count is expected, as brood slows or stops later in the fall the counts get higher there is no capped brood for the female mites to hide in. i did not go back in my notes but this was a discussion with all the instructors i think. that would be the technical transfer team from ontario bee assoc and dr. larry connor and others that i respect. there was 4 instructors and 15 students, a couple of the students were previous instructors from shorter versions of the workshop . it was better than great.


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## wildbranch2007 (Dec 3, 2008)

mathesonequip said:


> i got this from discussion during the ny beewellnees training a couple of years ago. in august as the bee population slows down about twice the mite count is expected, as brood slows or stops later in the fall the counts get higher there is no capped brood for the female mites to hide in. i did not go back in my notes but this was a discussion with all the instructors i think. that would be the technical transfer team from ontario bee assoc and dr. larry connor and others that i respect. there was 4 instructors and 15 students, a couple of the students were previous instructors from shorter versions of the workshop . it was better than great.


I was at the one this year, It was never discussed. but lets say you did your fall mite treatment and tested in Sept. got a low mite count, then when you tested
after they died, would you still expect the mite count to be significantly higher? I agree with what you posted above, I was more looking at after a treatment.
People in the area, that treat and tested the end of august, beginning of sept, using many different treatment methods, and had low mite counts are all finding dead colonies already. In one case we know that hives crashed in the area after treatment, so we are trying to figure out if testing the dead bees for mites is worth the effort. Thur. is forecast to have high enough temps. that I'm going to test some dead hives, and compare the numbers to the living hives next to them and see if they are comparable Just looking for a way to test deadouts and identify if a mite bomb went off.


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## mathesonequip (Jul 9, 2012)

mike.. with just a handfull of bees i do not think the mite count means much this time of year. as you know the mite damage is sick, short life bees from viruses. we had a dearth this year just like you. i am only 100 miles north of you. i am waiting to see what happens also... i am lucky to be part of the 3 year cornell research project. at the bee informed partnership inspection i had less than 2 percent mites in september , other diseases low or less than average but i have a big dose of black queen cell virus,, i have not found out much about this except to control mites and expect bad brood and to re-queen from somewhere else. in other words hope for the best and figure out what to do in the spring. the bee informed partnership folks from md. and washington state that inspected me gave me a 4+ out of 5 for my brood appearance, the hive brood was shut down 3 weeks prior the inspection due the dearth, i had 4 or 5 deep frames of bees more than average so fairly strong, but i was light on stores [the average hive], i had a bunch of deeps not extracted, some hives had nothing others had extra deeps full, they went back on and moved around.. so this seems good, so far. will they be alive in the spring? who knows. black queen cell virus, i never heard of it ????.. the report for 30 chemicals being looked for is not done yet... if it is as nice as the weatherman says i may take the mid-winter look this week... i at least feel good about going into winter with mites and disease under control. i would be second guessing myself except for the professional researcher check this year.


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## wildbranch2007 (Dec 3, 2008)

thanks for the reply, I would be interested if you check your bees, if you would post how your hives are doing. I have read about black queen cell virus, and I would think it would only be a major problem if you were raising your own queens, except when you have swarms. Did you guys up there get a good goldenrod flow?
People kept telling me that we had one, but I never saw it, I think they were mistaking the napp weed flow for a goldenrod flow, I didn't really see much of a flow late. The hives down here had low mite counts early sept, and still are crashing.



> As its name indicates, the BQCV virus primarily attacks developing queens. The virus can still be found in workers and drones, but they do not appear to have any symptoms. This virus is typically detected by PCR, or polymerase chain reaction, a common molecular technique that amplifies the unique genetic signature of the virus.


https://beeinformed.org/2013/12/04/bqcv-black-queen-cell-virus/


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## mathesonequip (Jul 9, 2012)

some goldenrod was in bloom but no flow. not enough to smell it. something real yellow was coming in real late in some hives only. a neighbor draged a hollow hemlock full of bees in my yard in november. i knotched a couple of big hollow blocks as a stand to get it on its side and get it off the ground, these were getting something yellow late. the log came out of a swamp they were logging, first time in a lot of years it was dry enough to get back there. not much management history for this hive. if they make it they will go into a deep or nucs and get a dose of formic acid in the spring.... as far as checking the bees i like to leave them alone, maybe too much. evidently in bad black queen cell virus cases there can be severe too little and bad brood problems.


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## Drew-NY (May 1, 2016)

Is it possible that the beekeepers tested/treated for mites during a time when they were safe inside capped brood and then the counts exploded afterwards? I read somewhere about caging the queen and waiting until the capped brood emerges before treating to ensure the mite life cycle gets broken.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Seriously, are you going to caged the queen for one whole month waiting for the other
cap brood frames to emerged? How will that set back the hives during the winter time when
most big fat winter bees are needed? I rather removed the small patches of the cap broods and then
allow the queen to lay new eggs on the clean empty drawn frames. This I call it the mite bee bomb method.


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## wildbranch2007 (Dec 3, 2008)

Drew-NY said:


> Is it possible that the beekeepers tested/treated for mites during a time when they were safe inside capped brood and then the counts exploded afterwards? I read somewhere about caging the queen and waiting until the capped brood emerges before treating to ensure the mite life cycle gets broken.


the chemicals that are used are designed to either kill the mites on the bees and under the cappings, or to produce chemicals that kill the mites over the time frame needed. With all the hives cropping up in the area, sometimes you kill your mites, and your neighbors graciously shares his with you, during the summer you can react, if you miss it, your hives die.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

I didn't see where you said whether you treated for varroa mites or not. Did you? How many frames of brood and bees were there in this hive in August?

"I didn't think of it until I got home but I should have brought a handful of dead bees home and checked them for tracheal mites." Do you know how to dissect bees to check them for tracheal mites? The only ones I have dissected were gathered live and stored in alcohol until dissected. I would suspect that dead bees would be harder to handle and that their thrachea may be dried up so much you couldn't get a good view of their contents anyway.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Drew-NY said:


> . I'm hesitant to use the term deadout because of the lack of dead bees. It's not that they died in the hive, they're just plain gone.


 Generally speaking, in bee parlance, a "deadout" is a hive that no longer has any live bees present in the hive, whether there are dead bees present or not. Leastwise that's what I mean when I say it and what I think my friends mean when they say it.

"How many deadouts were there in that yard?" "Oh, about ten, I think." A hive that had been occupied by a live colony is a deadout.


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## mathesonequip (Jul 9, 2012)

Drew-NY said:


> Is it possible that the beekeepers tested/treated for mites during a time when they were safe inside capped brood and then the counts exploded afterwards? I read somewhere about caging the queen and waiting until the capped brood emerges before treating to ensure the mite life cycle gets broken.


 it depends on what treatment you used and how many times you treated. mite away quick strips [formic acid] will penetrate cappings, so one treatment works.


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

mathesonequip said:


> so one treatment works.


Some trials conducted in France with MAQS showed a very variable efficacy among hives: from 97% to 7%.
Evaluating post-treatment efficacy is a must.


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## clyderoad (Jun 10, 2012)

Eduardo Gomes said:


> Some trials conducted in France with MAQS showed a very variable efficacy among hives: from 97% to 7%.
> Evaluating post-treatment efficacy is a must.


Will you elaborate and give some particulars. Thanks


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## mathesonequip (Jul 9, 2012)

what i get is: eduardo is saying check again for mites after treating even with MAQS strips.


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## clyderoad (Jun 10, 2012)

I agree. From very good efficacy to worthless efficacy. I wonder why and would like to know the particulars of the trial.
My experience has been very good efficacy.


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

clyderoad said:


> I agree. From very good efficacy to worthless efficacy. I wonder why and would like to know the particulars of the trial.


clyde below is the link to the French essay. I was also very surprised by the high variability.

source: http://www.alsace.chambagri.fr/file...ES-2013_comparaison_MAQS_Hopguard_Apilife.pdf


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## clyderoad (Jun 10, 2012)

thank you Eduardo.
I'll have to translate to English somehow.


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## WesternWilson (Jul 18, 2012)

Caging the queen to give hive a brood break....we all hoped brood breaks would literally break the mite life cycle but turns out they do not. Mites just hunker down in the absence of brood and wait for the queen to lay again. They can wait for months. So brood breaks just delay mite population expansion at the expense of bee population expansion. Not much of a solution.

You are right that most mite treatments do not affect mites under cappings with brood. That is why a follow up treatment is usually recommended. You need to be well up on the mite life cycle as well as the bee life cycle:
http://honeybeehealthcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/HBHC-Guide_Varroa-Interactive-PDF.pdf


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## Drew-NY (May 1, 2016)

I've learned a lot over the last few days. Thanks very much to all of you for your help with this. There's a few guys in my local bee club that I'll talk to about making a mite control plan (Mike is one of them). I watched Randy Oliver videos on how to do the alcohol wash technique and that looks like the way to go. Lots more to learn...


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## wildbranch2007 (Dec 3, 2008)

clyderoad said:


> thank you Eduardo.
> I'll have to translate to English somehow.


if you get it translated, could you post it. thanks


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