# Colony gone -- no stores -- is this why?



## msscha (Jan 4, 2014)

Hi, All.

It's been a while since I checked in. And it's been an interesting second season. Thus far, of 5 new colonies I've started, I'm batting 0 for 5. Sigh. Three I can attribute to things outside my control (I now know much more about keeping a bee yard clean and pest free), and the last 2 are due to my mistakes. I think perhaps to the same mistake. 

So, last night, I checked the hives and all seemed fine. The single hive I started during season one is absolutely booming. In fact, the Ag inspector and I are pretty sure she was running 2 queens for a while! The other colony was smaller, a nuc I purchased in May that looked to be doing fine. Apparently, I was wrong. Tonight, they are gone. When I opened up the hive (something I haven't done in 4 weeks), there was a smattering of capped brood, but nothing else. Just 7 combs of emptiness. I am thinking that 2 things happened: 1) the queen died and was not successfully replaced; 2) they starved. I admit that not checking was my mistake, and if I had, a missing queen would've been spotted. However, we're just coming out of our summer dearth, so no one was producing a lot of brood. The first inkling I had something might be amiss was during a simple comparison through the windows: Mama hive had tons of capped brood baking while Baby hive had nought.

The starvation one is more puzzling -- yes, we've had an incredibly rainy summer, even by Florida standards. But I have been feeding! Maybe just not enough? I was putting out about 1.5 gallons every 10 days or so, beginning in mid-July. But if there are no stores, that means there was no food, right? Nor was the hive filled with pests -- there was a handful of SHB, but no wax moths, no piles of dead larvae, no bees with their tongues hanging out dead on the bottom, no piles of wax shavings, no smell to speak of. Just an empty hive (except for 4 bees -- one even chased me a bit).

Am I correct in thinking that it was a combination hit? I failed to check hives enough thereby missed spotting a lost queen. And despite feeding, there just weren't the numbers being produced to result in a foraging force that could get through the dearth, even while being fed. Does that sound right? It's been a discouraging year, a steep learning curve. Not asking for sympathy, since I contributed to the problem, but do want to make sure that I understand the situation.

Thank you for your thoughts on this!


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## Bees of SC (Apr 12, 2013)

5 hives at 1.5 gallons every 10 days or so = starvation..You weren't feeding, you was just playing with them. The queen want lay without food and stores, no food in the area and the girls will leave for a better place. It is like you working for someone, you work just enough to get payed, the person you are working for pays you just enough to get you to come back but not enough to live on.
after a while you will find a better place to work..JMO.. 
no new brood = new bees = hive gone....... 4 weeks is too long not to check the hives....


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## Cub Creek Bees (Feb 16, 2015)

I think Bees of SC's math is spot on. My 8 boxes have been burning through 1/2gal a week each of 1/1 since the first of July. And those feeders are inside the individual hives, so I know who was getting it.

They finally started putting up some stores in the past two weeks, we got some rain and I switched them to 2/1.


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## GaryG74 (Apr 9, 2014)

I have two nucs that were going through a quart every other day before I put them in 8 frames deeps with a hive top feeder. The one that has been in the 8 frame hive the longest is going through a gallon every other day now. Keep feeding until they stop taking syrup when it's a new hive so they can draw comb and feed the young brood. Sorry you lost the hive, count it as a learning experience and keep going.


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## shannonswyatt (May 7, 2012)

I'm surprised they would starve in Florida in the late summer. I'm saying this as someone that has been to Disney once, so I'm not an expert on the state. I'm wondering if the hive absconded for some reason and then any of the nectar was robbed out.


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## Robbin (May 26, 2013)

We've got a pretty serious dearth here until goldenrod comes in, which is starting now. But it's been tough for the last 2 months. They certainly can starve to death if they don't have some stores put up. I lost one and found several others in trouble that I had to feed.


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## Robbin (May 26, 2013)

If you feed, you shouldn't have lost them to starvation. 1.5 gallons every 10 days is not a lot, but you shouldn't have had starving hives either.


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## shannonswyatt (May 7, 2012)

That is true 1.5 gallons isn't anything. I have a hive that has been taking a half gallons every 24 hours for quite some time. They came from a downed tree so they had a lot of work to do.


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## rookie2531 (Jul 28, 2014)

Hard to say, you said 1.5 gallons in 10 days. Is that open feeding? Or 1.5 gal. Per hive, every 10 days. Surely, if you haven't been in that hive in 4 weeks, you may never know. Probably got robbed out. If one of your other hives were stronger and they all were starving, then your big hive may have done it in. Small hive beetle frame should be put in freezer before they become slimed out. Good luck in the future.


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## missybee (Sep 6, 2014)

We are way north, but since July we have been feeding 1-2 gallons they take it down in 2-3 days, hive top feeders so I know each hive is getting the food. We do a food break for a few days so they can process what they have taken in. Just now, end of September, they are showing capped honey frames, over two months of steady feeding. 
During our July check, they had no capped honey, no nectar, lots of pollen. We had left a lot of capped honey during our end of June harvest it was all eaten. 

We learn by the lessons of hard knocks, the bees surprise us all the time. 

Good luck in the future, every mistake is a good learning tool, at least we think so


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## jbeshearse (Oct 7, 2009)

Robbin said:


> We've got a pretty serious dearth here until goldenrod comes in, which is starting now. But it's been tough for the last 2 months. They certainly can starve to death if they don't have some stores put up. I lost one and found several others in trouble that I had to feed.


It is very unlikely that the described hive starved. For a few reasons. 1. You mention only empty frames. Was there any pollen in the remaining frames? If not it is more likley that they were not gathering enough pollen to raise brood and then absconded looking for a better pollen source. A colony with no brood is an abscond candidate. 2. Lack of honey left behind cannot be considered. They may have left some and it gotten robbed out. Lack of SHB indicated that there was no brood or pollen in the hive when they left.

This was an abscond, not a death. A death leaves brood and dead bees behind. These bees left. Could have been a high mite load also keeping them from proper brooding. Going queenless would not lead them to abscond, it would more likely lock them there, as they would have no reason to abscond. They had a brood rearing issue. Either from lackof pollen, a brood disease or mites. Wasn't SHB or you would have slimed frames. Wasn't a queenless hive or they would not have absconded. This time of year they may run short on nectar stores but that normally does not result in absconds. I am in NW Florida and have not fed my bees less than 5 gallons total (25 hives). a few are a bit light, but none are out of stores (Inspected all in the last week). 

So I am betting lack of pollen or a brood disease (probably a high mite load) which shut the queen down and once most of the brood had emerged, they absconded.

my opinion anyway.

jeb


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## msscha (Jan 4, 2014)

Thank you, everyone, for your thoughts. Starvation seemed unlikely to me, too, and there was neither honey or pollen left in the hive. I don't recall them ever having much in the way of capped honey, either. I had supplemented with a pollen patty, but that seems not to have had much impact. (For the record, I was feeding 1.5 gallons/2 weeks for just two hives, just through the mid-summer dearth). They did lose their first queen, and the second one never got going, or maybe she didn't like the hive. So, I agree they absconded. Something else I found is that the roof wasn't doing a great job of keeping rain off the top bars, so there may have been moisture problems as well. I'll be re-doing the tops to all the hives b/c of this. 

In the meantime, I inherited (for a very reasonable price) a couple of golden mean tbhs from a local beek who found them too hot to have on her property. I've not had the same experience with them -- so far, they seem like pretty normal bees. The construction of these hives is different -- both considerably shorter and a couple inches wider than the other I've built. Not sure how to deal with this -- take apart my current hives and increase the width? The 2 ft length strikes me as too short -- while one has only filled just over half, the other has 3 bars left, and our fall flow will hit before too long. I am leery of moving them, though! Not feeling very confident at the moment. However, the queen in that hive is amazing, and they've got a really strong start so will quickly use up that last space. I'm thinking that I will take apart one of the unused hives, make it a bit shorter (down to 36 inches or so) and wide enough to accommodate the new bar size.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

Probably robbed out. It can happen pretty quick. The pollen maybe cleaned out by other bugs...


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