# split turned to double abscond?!



## cwoodar0 (Jun 13, 2021)

Hey so here is a situation, and maybe I could find help to avoid the mistake again. back story:
I have three big hives (deep/med brood box 4-5 supers each) and extracted honey each week in june. So at the end of june I have three very strong hives, heading into dearth with double brood box and 1 super each. I decided to split one, because someone was asking about a nuc. I split the strongest hive, and moved 4 frames and queen into nuc box and set it 30' away on my nuc pedestal. After a week or two, not much activity, a bit less than I'd expect from a new nuc, but maybe not a lot of foragers yet, so I wait. After 3 weeks of being a nuc, I come home from work to the nuc being robbed out. The sun goes down and I see that theres not really any bees inside. Not even more than 5 dead bees. Its safe to say the nuc absconded. I coulnd't find the swarm anywhere. 
Now a week later, I notice lots of wax in front of the mother hive this nuc came from. I open this morning and find its robbed and no resident bees. There were probably close to 50,000 bees before the split. I bet I only took 3-4000 to the nuc. 

With the backstory presented, I am not able to find what happened to the bees or why they left. I have low levels of beetles, and used robbing screens on all hives here. The mother hive had 20-30 queen cells that had all been build, used, and torn down most of the way, so I felt like they were doing fine. My other two hives are beyond strong with wall to wall resources in 3 boxes. 

Anyone have a gander as to why this split was a total fail?


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

I dont think it is safe to use the abscond term! Some research will show it is a rare occurrence with european honeybee. More than half of the bees on the frames you moved would have immediately returned, leaving no foragers or defenders. With dearth, robbing would be a given. The mother colony may have failed to requeen. Robbing screens????? Robbing is contagious and fierce in a dearth especially with italian bees. Full sized hives will often succumb.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

with QCs in the mother hive they may have swarmed, the "tore down" indicates a queen was out.
in Dearth the hive may have sent a big swarm to find better forage, the small amount left were robbed out.
at times the remaining bees join the robbers.

next time:
feed all the hives to prevent robbing.
keep close watch on all the split parts.
maybe try to split in a better season.

good luck

GG


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## cwoodar0 (Jun 13, 2021)

Looking back, I do think it was a poor time to split a hive. I guess it's odd that they all disappeared. Not even a neighbor stopping by to mention a swarm or the like. I live in a spread out subdivision where everyone has land and there is 9/13 retired so they "see everything."


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## NUBE (May 24, 2009)

If it’s been several weeks since you opened the nuc or the original hive to check on them I doubt either absconded. A colony, no matter how big, without a laying queen during the summer dearth is just asking to get robbed. The same for a nuc with nothing but nurse bees and a queen. I’m not saying you can’t make a split during a dearth, but you definitely have to take a lot of precautions. Robber screens to start. And, believe it or not, it actually helps if you feed all the colonies in your apiary if you’re trying to do a split during a dearth. You definitely have to be careful how you go about it (I wouldn’t recommend boardman feeders or open feeding) but putting feed on strong colonies that may not need it too terribly much will give them something to do, and, in combination with the use of robber screens, it can really cut down on robbing. What little robbing does occur is counteracted by the hives being robbed still having access to nutrition.

I’d assume your nuc was starved out by robbing and most of the bees died. They won’t die starving inside the hive like they would in the winter. When food becomes scarce inside the hive, they go out trying to find food. Since you’re in a dearth and there is no natural food, they perish away from the hive. Not being properly fed, and thus able to fly, the queen will leave also, but her chances of survival are pretty much zero. Even if the nuc wasn’t robbed immediately, the brood of a laying queen burns through tons of carbs exceptionally fast. Whereas you might get away with a single frame of honey/nectar to hold a nuc over for a few days until nurse bees can start foraging during a flow, it takes a lot of syrup to keep them going during a dearth. Never let them run out “a lot”.

Mating percentages go down quite a bit in the summer. I’d guess you didn’t get a mated queen back to that big colony. Not only are there typically fewer drones during a dearth, there are also typically a lot more hungry predators. Without a queen, even a big strong colony will be dejected and a target for robbing from healthy queenright hives. It’s likely that bees started bailing on both the nuc and the big hive once things started going bad. So a lot of them possibly survived, they just did so by begging into a healthy hive.

So, if you ever try a split this time of year in the future, use robber screens and feed a lot. Still nothing guaranteed, but your odds will go up some.


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## cwoodar0 (Jun 13, 2021)

Now that was a good post! I appreciate your contribution and certainly answers some questions.


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