# Death of a hive



## AvatarDad (Mar 31, 2016)

Chickens love the grubs, but hate the webs. If you have chickens remove the webs as best you can and let them help clean.

Sunlight kills the grubs as well. I had a bait hive infested by moths and mostly just melted down or threw away the combs after a few days in sunlight. I didn't trust their structural integrity with those tunnels in them.


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## Branman (Aug 20, 2003)

Freeze em, pull out as much webbing as you can, then when you get a new hive and stay on top of the mites they'll clean it out and fix it no problem.


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## vtbeeguy (Jun 10, 2016)

Either freeze them to save for a future colony or melt all the combs down so you can at least get what wax is there. No reason to waste good wax.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

So what is the reason that this hive died? When was that? 
Did you not give them a mite treatment at the end of this summer?


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## Yunzow (Mar 16, 2017)

beepro said:


> So what is the reason that this hive died? When was that?
> Did you not give them a mite treatment at the end of this summer?


Well, TBH, I chose to let them go, because I could have fed them but I deliberately chose not to. Not trying to be contrary, but I could see that they had plenty of forage which they were apparently not making use of. I thought it would be better for the overall genetics of the the local gene pool (for example, "wild" honeybees) to not prop up these ladies who seemed indifferent to the local grub that I could see other pollinators and honeybees making use of.


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## Yunzow (Mar 16, 2017)

Branman said:


> Freeze em, pull out as much webbing as you can, then when you get a new hive and stay on top of the mites they'll clean it out and fix it no problem.


thanks for the tip Branman


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## trishbookworm (Jun 25, 2016)

If you keep 10 or so good combs, then you will give the future bees a key leg up. More than that is helpful but not as key. If you have 10-15 good combs, then the rest may be good for wax.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

In that case try to trap some bees the next season to see if they might 
adapt better in your TBH. If even keeping bees are that hard then consider how
to manage the mites in a TBH. I don't have a clue of how beekeepers with TBH do it.


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## trishbookworm (Jun 25, 2016)

There's a beek in Medina who uses drone culling and splits solely for mite management. This means pulling drone comb every week for much of the summer though - or else it backfires. She uses drone comb in a Lang, but this can be adapted to TBH because the bees tend to build drone comb at the edge they "want" for the broodnest.

I use OAV - I move the honey bars to the back of the hive and I put a follower to create a volume the size of a Lang deep. Then I use the wand and vaporize.

You should be able to put a MAQS or other strip between the combs but I have not wanted to work with those. I don't trust Ohio weather to cooperate!


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

Yunzow said:


> I thought it would be better for the overall genetics of the the local gene pool (for example, "wild" honeybees) to not prop up these ladies


Removing drone brood castrates the colony so they can't impact the locals and has the benefit of removing mites. 

However the reality is a back yard bee keeper with a few hives has a net zero impact on the local gene pool. 
letting a hive die and mite bomb however can and does effect the local bees 

letting a hive build up a large amount of mites, crash and spread its mites to the neighborhood is very poor beekeeping. If you must, enthonize the hive and block off to keep robber bees out. 
better would be to drone cull, prop up and requeen come spring, the next result is the same... new genetics... the difference is you buying a $30 queen instead of a $120 package or $160 nuc


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## roddo27846 (Apr 10, 2017)

Yeah, you are right -- not one of us alone makes much difference. Maybe thousands of us will though. Who knows? Thinking the bees need us is kinda anthropocentric, isn't it? If they really do, we are in deep trouble. 

Euthanizing the hive before it is robbed out is good practice as you say. It also could save the comb before the moths get it too.


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## Branman (Aug 20, 2003)

Not sure if he has a top bar hive or not, but he meant "To be honest" when he said TBH.

Yunzow, they were mite and virus ridden, so they were basically waiting to die, that's why they weren't foraging. You need to either get mite resistant genetics, or treat your bees for mites. Buying a random hive or queen and hoping for the best means dead bees 99% of the time.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

Right the bees don't need us, they are doing just fine.
It when we put our needs first we see problems. Unattualy large hives cause a large amount of brood to be raised, meaning more mites are raised, suppressing swarming also raises the mite loads as does keeping hives in an untraturaly high density.

There ARE thousands of bee keepers trying, but to change bee genetics would take a landscape change.
The mantra of "get better genetics next time " is starting to ring hollow, mite restiance seems to often be lost when the stock is moved. Even the fameus ferals of the arnot forest showed no more mite restiance then comerisal stock when side by side trials were done. 
Were you keep bees and how you keep bees is seeming more important then what bees you keep, yes stock selection matters, but it's often one pice of the puzzle, and many outhers are being missed

It's hard to keep bees
It's harder to keep TF bees
It's really hard to keep TF bees unless you have learned to be a good beekeeper
You don't learn to be a good beekeeper if your hives are dead every spring
Learn to be a beekeeper, then learn to be a TF beekeeper


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

msl said:


> It's hard to keep bees
> It's harder to keep TF bees
> It's really hard to keep TF bees unless you have learned to be a good beekeeper
> You don't learn to be a good beekeeper if your hives are dead every spring
> Learn to be a beekeeper, then learn to be a TF beekeeper


It´s a tough lesson but msl is telling the truth.


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## ruthiesbees (Aug 27, 2013)

Branman said:


> Not sure if he has a top bar hive or not, but he meant "To be honest" when he said TBH..


We ARE in the topbar hive forum, so I will assume the OP has a topbar hive. 

Yunzow, I keep all topbar hives. 17 of them at the moment, but not all full size. All of mine have screened bottoms with a solid slide-in IPM board where I keep diatomaceous earth year round. I use a monthly powdered sugar shake on each comb which forces grooming of the bees. The mites that fall off end up in the DE and die (small hive beetles too). You might consider such an arrangement with your hive next year. And freeze and keep as much of the drawn comb as you can, carve out any really webby parts. Bees will fix it right up.


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## Corto (May 29, 2017)

Curious, Yunzow posted originally about what seems to be wax moths, right? How did the conversation change to mites? I am wrapping up my first season with a TF TBH, 10 bars full of capped honey, never had to feed, we shall see if they are still around in spring. I only pulled one bar of honey and never checked for mites. 

As I've said before, from all the comments here it sounds like I have a better than 50/50 chance that this will bite me in the ass and they won't be around in spring. I understand. That's just how I wanted to try my first year, though, esp. with my hive being strong and supposedly having a lineage from Minnesota Hygienic bees.


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## ruthiesbees (Aug 27, 2013)

Corto said:


> Curious, Yunzow posted originally about what seems to be wax moths, right? How did the conversation change to mites? I am wrapping up my first season with a TF TBH, 10 bars full of capped honey, never had to feed, we shall see if they are still around in spring. I only pulled one bar of honey and never checked for mites.
> 
> As I've said before, from all the comments here it sounds like I have a better than 50/50 chance that this will bite me in the ass and they won't be around in spring. I understand. That's just how I wanted to try my first year, though, esp. with my hive being strong and supposedly having a lineage from Minnesota Hygienic bees.


Wax moths are usually not the root cause of "why" a hive dies. They are just the "clean-up-crew". But many beekeepers don't get into their hives often enough to see the start of the end, or do something to manage the mites through out the season. Whenever a hive dies, it is important to try and figure out why. Could be loss of the queen, mites, robbing, etc.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

When it come to mites the strong hives often die 1st more brood means more mites in many cases.
Unless your a very skilled beekeeper it's hard to know what is going on with the mites till the hive hits the point of no return. Unless you do rolls. 
I feel the message that TF keepers shouldn't worry about mites is a wrong one. I think TF keepers espicy new ones need to check for mites, much more so the treating keepers


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## Yunzow (Mar 16, 2017)

ruthiesbees said:


> We ARE in the topbar hive forum, so I will assume the OP has a topbar hive.
> 
> Yunzow, I keep all topbar hives. 17 of them at the moment, but not all full size. All of mine have screened bottoms with a solid slide-in IPM board where I keep diatomaceous earth year round. I use a monthly powdered sugar shake on each comb which forces grooming of the bees. The mites that fall off end up in the DE and die (small hive beetles too). You might consider such an arrangement with your hive next year. And freeze and keep as much of the drawn comb as you can, carve out any really webby parts. Bees will fix it right up.


Hi, Ruth,

thanks for the advice. Can you recommend any schematics for such a bottom board? I will be building a new hive for next years.


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## Yunzow (Mar 16, 2017)

*post-mortem*

Hello, 

well it went into post-mortem, which I was trying to avoid that conversation, but maybe it is a good idea.

I am hearing that it is a good chance it was mites, which I think is quite likely because the nursery spend a good ten minutes telling me repeatedly that I needed to medicate these bees.

I don't regret going through this experience because it is a good learning experience for me and I have seen some things I wouldn't have seen otherwise so it helps me understand what I am dealing with.

As for a proper post-mortem, here is the history of the hive:
1) These bees had a rapid build up in the spring as far as I can tell. I think it went to 19 bars at maximum but only two of those bars were honeycombs.
2) In the summer their population was huge. They ended up eating all the honey in the honeycombs. This is part of the reason I go on about the foraging, which admittedly might have had something to do with summer dearth. However, whenever I was thinking that I would always be going around looking for forage and seeing forage with honeybees on them.
3) I was always a bit suspicious about the genetics of this specific hive because the brood pattern was always loose, as far as I can tell from examples, never a tight brood pattern.
4) The waning of the hive started before July, right before our wedding. That was actually the first time I eyeballed the queen in action in hive (seeing her in the queen cage was the first first of course). So from July until a few weeks ago, dwindling, dwindling then dead.

I would like to learn more about how bees spread mites to other colonies, intuitively that would make sense.


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## roddo27846 (Apr 10, 2017)

Yunzow said:


> Hi, Ruth,
> 
> thanks for the advice. Can you recommend any schematics for such a bottom board? I will be building a new hive for next years.


I use these. For $35 you can get one which can be used as a pattern. They work great.

https://www.lappesbeesupply.com/assembled-8-frame-common-cedar-screened-bottom-board-with-drawer/


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## trishbookworm (Jun 25, 2016)

Because it was a first year beekeeper with a first year package, a number of reasons may have led to this hive's death. 

If the queen stopped laying for too long due to a nectar dearth, the hive would not have had the numbers to survive the mite pressure and feed the larvae and forage too... so not feeding a first year hive means you'll be subject to the same odds as a feral new hive - 80%+ of those die the first year. Nothing to do with genetics - that's just bum luck if a season is too dry and a new swarm doesn't find a stocked hive from a previous colony that died.

If the queen stopped laying because she was stressed by temperature, by being banked too long, or by being poorly mated, then that means the brood break will come at a time when the hive cannot afford to have a new queen raised. It takes 45+ days for an egg to become a forager worker bee - if there is a 40 day lag in bees being born, that is a big problem for the hive numbers being too low by the time there is a dearth. And a dearth lowers those numbers even more.

If mites truly overran the hive, they will have left a trace. If you take the brood comb and flip it upside down, and look at the roof of the cell (so you're looking down at the roof) - if you see a lot of cells with small white dust bits, that's mite frass. Mite poop. It is only left behind after a successful mite mating. 

So, my thinking is always to learn from my losses. I lost a hive because the sugar roll said low mites but the reality was different - so now I use the alcohol wash. And I did euthanize that one rather than let it get robbed out. I lost a hive because a purchased queen was superceded - so I will avoid purchased queens, and monitor fresh queens more closely for signs she is being superceded due to poor mating. Live and learn, as they say - school of hard knocks.

I do strongly suggest rethinking your bee source, or at least your queen source, and planning out your mite treatment plan so it is ready to start when you get bees. Also it is key to have 2 hives minimum. 

As far as mite treatment, it doesn't mean getting out the MAQS strips necessarily. I know of beekeepers who use constant mite culling and an early July brood break to manage mites, and it works well. Ruthiesbees has success with powdered sugar dusting. I use OAV. 

A hive loss means that future hive(s) will have a leg up on success, but it still stings. :/


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## ruthiesbees (Aug 27, 2013)

sorry for the delay, I was at our state beekeeping conference. I buy my topbar hive kits from Beeline apiaries in MI. Seems like a great deal to be shipped complete to me for $150 as I'm not a wood worker. I do have some photos of their hive bottom setup that is made with 1x2's and a Masonite board, but I don't have actual plans.


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## AvatarDad (Mar 31, 2016)

"Seems like a great deal" seems about right to me! I've been generally too lazy to build mine with screened bottom boards, but have been dying to try the DE trick. That's not a bad price to pay to get one ready to nail together. I've never heard of this vendor before, and appreciate the tip.

Ruthie, some day I need to buy you a beer or an ice cream.  (I would buy you both, but that seems gross).


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## Yunzow (Mar 16, 2017)

Thanks for the feedback Trish.

I do plan on modifying my original hive to have a screened bottom.
It took me a while to vision, but I finally have a decent idea for it DIY,
or so I think!

Also, I will be getting bees from a local supplier who uses organic practices to manage the mites. AND building at least one more hive.



trishbookworm said:


> Because it was a first year beekeeper with a first year package, a number of reasons may have led to this hive's death.
> 
> If the queen stopped laying for too long due to a nectar dearth, the hive would not have had the numbers to survive the mite pressure and feed the larvae and forage too... so not feeding a first year hive means you'll be subject to the same odds as a feral new hive - 80%+ of those die the first year. Nothing to do with genetics - that's just bum luck if a season is too dry and a new swarm doesn't find a stocked hive from a previous colony that died.
> 
> ...


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## trishbookworm (Jun 25, 2016)

Oops I just realized i wrote "constant mite culling" when I meant "constant DRONE culling". They swap out drone frames once a week - 3 drone frame locations in a 2 deep hive. They place drone frames at locations bottom frame 2, bottom frame 9 and top frame 2. So week 1, place an empty drone frame at bottom 2 for an empty, week 2, place an empty at bottom 9, week 3, place an empty at top 2, week 4, SWAP out bottom 2 for a new empty drone frame. Hope that makes sense...

I don't have drone frames - but I have a lot of drone comb with honey in it. I have been putting new bars at the outer edge of the brood nest - I think they are mainly using that location for drone brood. Anyone else noticed that adding at the edge of the brood nest always results in drone comb, once the brood nest is at a certain number? For my 6 hives, that's at location 12 or so - my bars are the size of a lang deep frame, while a Kenyan is about 3/4 size of a lang deep frame. The bees were drawing a lot of drone comb this summer.  instead of worker comb. But they all have at least 10 bars that are drawn worker comb.

Here is a call out for others' observations on drone comb - any patterns in when the bees draw drone comb vs worker comb, and what position the bar is relative to the brood nest and honey section?

If you have an end entrance, is the drone comb ever on "both sides" of the brood nest, or just on the side that abuts the honey storage area? Anyways, I plan on modifying the frame-based drone culling approach in 2018 - for the hives that will be honeymakers not queenmakers. I need drones from a queen with good qualities! Though I am probably getting tons of drones from elsewhere. Tracking feral bees is on my to-do list...

The way that we top bar beekeepers can watch the bees "decide" what comb to put where, when to draw it out, when to add honey stores instead of worker comb - just so much more interesting that a box! Though I am going to try a Dadant deep for an outyard...


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## trishbookworm (Jun 25, 2016)

Oops I just realized i wrote "constant mite culling" when I meant "constant DRONE culling". They swap out drone frames once a week - 3 drone frame locations in a 2 deep hive. They place drone frames at locations bottom frame 2, bottom frame 9 and top frame 2. So week 1, place an empty drone frame at bottom 2 for an empty, week 2, place an empty at bottom 9, week 3, place an empty at top 2, week 4, SWAP out bottom 2 for a new empty drone frame. Hope that makes sense...

I don't have drone frames - but I have a lot of drone comb with honey in it. I have been putting new bars at the outer edge of the brood nest - I think they are mainly using that location for drone brood. Anyone else noticed that adding at the edge of the brood nest always results in drone comb, once the brood nest is at a certain number? For my 6 hives, that's at location 12 or so - my bars are the size of a lang deep frame, while a Kenyan is about 3/4 size of a lang deep frame. The bees were drawing a lot of drone comb this summer.  instead of worker comb. But they all have at least 10 bars that are drawn worker comb.

Here is a call out for others' observations on drone comb - any patterns in when the bees draw drone comb vs worker comb, and what position the bar is relative to the brood nest and honey section?

If you have an end entrance, is the drone comb ever on "both sides" of the brood nest, or just on the side that abuts the honey storage area? Anyways, I plan on modifying the frame-based drone culling approach in 2018 - for the hives that will be honeymakers not queenmakers. I need drones from a queen with good qualities! Though I am probably getting tons of drones from elsewhere. Tracking feral bees is on my to-do list...

The way that we top bar beekeepers can watch the bees "decide" what comb to put where, when to draw it out, when to add honey stores instead of worker comb - just so much more interesting that a box! Though I am going to try a Dadant deep for an outyard...


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## Yunzow (Mar 16, 2017)

I have a different perspective on this hive loss after going to the local beekeeper meeting in February. Losses were great all round, and these were all Langstroth beekeepers who insist on treating their bees for mites.

I know it is real hard to speculate about these things without all the information but I decided to make this post today, because I wouldn't want any other newbees to wrongly assume that treatment is a guarantee for success either. Even for experienced beekeepers in my area who treated chemically for mites, they had some bad losses this winter.

Anyways I'm looking forward to a fresh start this weekend with three new packages, this will allow me to compare different techniques for management. I'm going to try figure out the whole "nuc/ split" thing this year, too. Wish me luck!


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