# Bee hive longevity



## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

interesting. i know personally of bees that can survive many years like that with no intervention. why not start observing them and see for yourself? 

there are two times in the year when those colonies are most likely to die out. the first is now if they fail to overwinter and the second is during swarm season if they fail to get a successfully mated new queen.

since they are not being managed they will be likely to swarm every year. i would consider setting out a swarm trap or two nearby. it's possible those are some bona fide survivors.


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## robere (Sep 4, 2016)

squarepeg said:


> interesting. i know personally of bees that can survive many years like that with no intervention. why not start observing them and see for yourself?
> 
> there are two times in the year when those colonies are most likely to die out. the first is now if they fail to overwinter and the second is during swarm season if they fail to get a successfully mated new queen.
> 
> since they are not being managed they will be likely to swarm every year. i would consider setting out a swarm trap or two nearby. it's possible those are some bona fide survivors.


I found a large massive pile of dead bees in one of the hives a few weeks ago after a cold snap. If they are queenless I don't see them surviving. There will be no nurse bees come spring


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

not finding a queen or seeing brood can also mean you didn't see her and they have started brooding yet, not unusual for this time of year. it won't be too long before you'll know. watch for pollen coming in on the warm days. please keep us updated if you can.


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

It's perfectly feasible they've lasted this long. On the flipside though, I've had a hive that a swarm moved into, I would not have known it happened except I knew the bees were queenless come February as their queen aged out in winter and I found them most likely laying worker early spring. I just left them to dwindle away... well, I stopped by some weeks later to graft some cherries before bud break and the hive was bringing in pollen... I found that very curious for a queenless dwindling hive that had maybe 300-400 bees in it prior. I opened it up and sure enough it was now queenright with a fair bunch of bees just starting to brood up and the queen was a large dark striped queen that I'd never seen before and I know all my queens in each hive. If I hadn't checked them by chance earlier though, I would've never known that a swarm had occupied them and figured they must've superceded as I did find that hive being superceded just before winter, but when I checked it again a few weeks later, I found the old queen still present who was in her 4th year.


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## fieldsofnaturalhoney (Feb 29, 2012)

My stab could be forever I think you would be incorrect in assuming that the hives had died. Surely they have possibly swarmed, & definetly requeened IF it is the original decindents. You may have did them a disservice by treating them;( luckily the mouses didn't destroy the colony. Since it seems you may be the new care taker, put guards on in the Fall.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

fieldsofnaturalhoney said:


> You may have did them a disservice by treating them...


agreed. i missed the part about treating in the original post. sounds like a potential opportunity to gather some survivor genetics may have been missed. it would have been better to have just observed them for continuity with that kind of track record. 

it could be that these bees haven't had the chance to read those studies and it appears that knowing 'NOTHING' about bees has been working out pretty good for the friends. 

i'm sure the 'help' was well intentioned but how is it going to look if after 10 - 15 years of having bees in those boxes there aren't any come spring. certain treatments as well as first year beekeepers have been known to be hard on queens.

if those survivor hives have been spitting swarms for all those years chances are there are some feral colonies around and that would be a good spot to place some swarm traps this spring. perhaps you could show your friends how to do that.

i'm not trying to bust your bubble robere but your assumption that wild (and unmanaged) colonies can't survive year after year is wrong. they do better in some regions than they do in others and you just might happen to be in an area that supports them.


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## My All For Him (Jan 18, 2017)

For what it's worth, there's a tree here in Grenada (West Indies) where some locals claim bees have been living for the past 30-40 years. Probably not true, but when someone only walks past the tree once every couple years and they remember bees in that tree when they were a young boy and they don't know much about bees... of course they think it's still the same ones. 
The next thing the locals talk about is that the tree is probably full, full of honey - as if all those bees would just continually store thousands of pounds of honey in the tree. 
I've attached a picture of the tree - with my buddy working on a "Hogan's trap-out". If this tree is full of honey, we could feed the island for a month.


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## tpope (Mar 1, 2015)

I have a hive that has stood, without intervention, in boxes that I stacked, for in excess of 13 years. I am working to establish good support resources before breaking those boxes apart. I want to be able to make grafts and raise queens from them...


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

robere, after making my last post i went back and found the thread you started back in the fall. i see where you asked a lot of good questions about these 'wild' hives and received a variety of opinions. 

like most things beekeeping there's a number of ways of going about things and it's really up to you and your friends. when i hear about bees like these it sparks my interest in the possibility that they may demonstrating natural resistance to mites.


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## robere (Sep 4, 2016)

Both hives had mites, but one had a lot more than the other (15/100). Hey,some of you guys aren't telling me what I want to hear. Ha.. 
These hives never looked good. The brood was shotgun pattern. Also last July they harvested honey. I dont think they got any the year before. They got about 1/2 gallon from one hive and about 2 gallons from another. I told them both "These bees have very little stores, I wouldn't take all that honey". One guy said "F it, we're taking it. So they dont respect the welfare of the hive but yet they want honey.There were years they got no honey at all so if the hives were doing so well "as wild hives", why would they be in such bad shape? Just because they saw a few bees outside the one hive doesn't mean the hive is doing well. They both had 2 boxes on them but each only had one with bees in it. A lot of the the frames are wavy and have the bottoms are broke off and rotted and chewed on from mice. My feeling is these hives were just "surviving". If they're not healthy enough to produce honey, what good are they?


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

yeah, it's kind of like mike said in your first thread, unless someone knowledgable was verifying it's entirely possibly that they are dying out most winters with new swarms moving in.

if that's the case then your assistance may be helpful in preventing the spread of pests and diseases to nearby colonies from these unmanaged hives. 

when i google mapped peducah i see that there are some forested areas to the west and to the east, so feral survivors in the area aren't out of the question. good luck with them robere.


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## psm1212 (Feb 9, 2016)

Kind of an irony that beekeepers, in their zeal to prevent swarming, may be handicapping their colonies from successfully dealing with their own mite problems. The approach that these "uncaring" bee-havers have taken is very similar to the approach that Tom Seeley is encouraging us all to take. Let them live. Let them swarm. Let them struggle. Let them adapt. Pull a little honey when you can, but otherwise leave them alone and enjoy them. Maybe Tom is onto something.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

I always get a bang out of Vampire movies and shows where they keep saying they are "immortal" yet people keep killing them... bee colonies are immortal in that same way. A colony doesn't die of old age, it dies of a queen not making it back from mating, or a lack of fall flow and not enough food to get through the winter. But of course they are "mortal" in the fact that the colony can die, just not from old age... but sooner or later bad luck will catch up with them...


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## Hops Brewster (Jun 17, 2014)

nice analogy.:lpf:


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## Hops Brewster (Jun 17, 2014)

When it comes to knowing mite levels, it doesn't matter whether they're ancient colonies of mite resistant survivors or annual swarms from nearby domestic stock, it is good to know the mite levels, and alcohol washes will give you the counts. But wait until spring! Feral survivors or kept stock, they need to make it through winter first.

Meanwhile you can watch them. In the spring you'll be able to go in for mite checks, look for other disease, and for brood and queens, and to begin serious observation. At that time, you might see some genuine mite grooming activity and have yourself some resistant stock to develop, or yo might find they seriously need help and rescue from varroa infestation in order to survive. But that time is still a few weeks away.


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## fieldsofnaturalhoney (Feb 29, 2012)

robere said:


> Both hives had mites, but one had a lot more than the other (15/100). Hey,some of you guys aren't telling me what I want to hear. Ha..
> These hives never looked good. The brood was shotgun pattern. Also last July they harvested honey. I dont think they got any the year before. They got about 1/2 gallon from one hive and about 2 gallons from another. I told them both "These bees have very little stores, I wouldn't take all that honey". One guy said "F it, we're taking it. So they dont respect the welfare of the hive but yet they want honey.There were years they got no honey at all so if the hives were doing so well "as wild hives", why would they be in such bad shape? Just because they saw a few bees outside the one hive doesn't mean the hive is doing well. They both had 2 boxes on them but each only had one with bees in it. A lot of the the frames are wavy and have the bottoms are broke off and rotted and chewed on from mice. My feeling is these hives were just "surviving". If they're not healthy enough to produce honey, what good are they?


Ahhhh, the details


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## Forgiven (Nov 17, 2016)

I don't see how treating would be disservice even if they have been surviving without...

...treating doesn't kill the genes, or behaviour. Not if you are talking about two hives.

If you are breeding larger stock, I can barely see the argument for 'survival of the fittest' but not an argument I'd use for individual hives.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

Forgiven said:


> I don't see how treating would be disservice even if they have been surviving without...


there is a not very well understood hypothesis that natural resistance may have something to do with the balance of microbes in the hive. anything introduced into the hive to kill mites is likely to change that balance, perhaps eliminating certain 'beneficial' microbes that may be contributing to natural resistance. you are correct about the genetics, but genetics is only one piece of the puzzle.


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## CrazyTalk (Jan 27, 2015)

There's a good chance they've been dying off pretty regularly and then being repopulated with swarms. An empty hive with fully built comb is about the best swarm trap you can have.

There are a couple of videos on youtube of a guy breaking apart a hive that 'had bees' and had been ignored for more than a decade, and finding that there was a queen excluder above the first box, and realizing that the queen was probably dying as soon as the cluster moved up in the winter, and then being repopulated by the first swarms.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

CrazyTalk said:


> There's a good chance they've been dying off pretty regularly and then being repopulated with swarms. An empty hive with fully built comb is about the best swarm trap you can have.


around these parts (and depending on what time of year the dying off occurs) there would be very little built comb left by the time the wax moths got through with it. 

the same happens with comb i put in my swarm traps if i don't spray it first with bt.

if most of the comb in these hives was still in the frames and intact it would argue more for bees having been in the hive year round.


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## robere (Sep 4, 2016)

CrazyTalk said:


> There's a good chance they've been dying off pretty regularly and then being repopulated with swarms. An empty hive with fully built comb is about the best swarm trap you can have.
> 
> There are a couple of videos on youtube of a guy breaking apart a hive that 'had bees' and had been ignored for more than a decade, and finding that there was a queen excluder above the first box, and realizing that the queen was probably dying as soon as the cluster moved up in the winter, and then being repopulated by the first swarms.


This has been my rookie opinion.The hives are located at one of their properties. One of the guys is there every day bit its not his residence.One hive is right next to the driveway, but I guarantee you when he pulls in there he pays no attention to the hive rather there are bees there or not. He did tell me he's never noticed "no bees". So an empty hive could easily go unnoticed.The other hive was back in the woods and they probably saw it once a year,maybe twice just to slap a super on it like "ok bees make me some honey" and he walks away. I feel these hives have died and repopulated.


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## robere (Sep 4, 2016)

squarepeg said:


> around these parts (and depending on what time of year the dying off occurs) there would be very little built comb left by the time the wax moths got through with it.
> 
> the same happens with comb i put in my swarm traps if i don't spray it first with bt.
> 
> if most of the comb in these hives was still in the frames and intact it would argue more for bees having been in the hive year round.


Some combs had circles as large as 2 or 3 inches eatn all the way through the combs. I have videos of a lot of my inspections. I just viewed one and several of the frames had the combs chewed away a lot of the way around the comb. There were moths present on my 1st inspection.The one back in the woods was full of hive beetles. We moved it to a more sunny location last summer.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

understood robere. i once forgot to spray a deep frame brood comb i put in a swarm trap and when i went back a month later it was 100% gone. interesting thread, thanks for sharing, looking forward to seeing how things work out for these colonies.


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