Yeah, the bees left me on Tuesday! In other words, they absconded. A friend of mine saw them gather above the entrance, in a HUGE football shaped cluster, around 2:00PM. Then they started to fly south. My friend said it was a huge black cloud flying in the air. I was shocked when I got home! And pretty sad! There is still a VERY small cluster of bees, barely 100 bees.
Here are some reasons that bees abscond:
~Lack of food- No mine had PLENTY of food!
~Loss of Queen- Nope, they release the queen and took her to find a better place =(
~ Uncomfortable living conditions- Maybe 10 bars between the follower boards is too little room for them. And the night before they left, I saw them in the window with condensed water surrounding them. Maybe it got wet in the hive?! They had a SBB, so they had ventilation, maybe too much? Then why was it wet in the hive?
~Pests- Ants were seen around the hive when the syrup leaked. I sprinkled cinnamon around the legs. Never saw a ant in the hive or on the entrance.
~Mites & Diseases- They were treated before shipped to Betterbee. Not too sure about this.
And one other thing, when I couldn't find my thin wire to tie the queen cage, I grabbed the next wire I could find. It was a rusty piece of wire. Perhaps bees don't like rust?
But mostly, I think I was bothering them too much. They needed their time and peace to get situated, and I just probably stressed them out.
I might be getting more bees, but I did some more research, so I could limit my chances of having my money 'fly away' from home. The NUC is what I came up with. Nucs consist of 4 or 5 frames of brood, and honey. Bees are much more less likely to leave their brood. Also, these bees know each other and their queen, because they are a functionating colony already, just smaller in size.
I just need to research on how to install a deep frame nuc into a TBH! I'm defiantly going to wean these frames out of the TBH.
I think I'm going to order from here... http://mvabeepunchers.com/. If anyone has experience with this producer, please do tell me your experiences! Thanks!
Well, I was pretty upset and got discouraged about keeping bees for a day or so, but my addiction overtook me and now I'm getting more!
Hehe.
Have a good night,
Kris
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A Beekeeper's Random Thoughts, Ideas and Adventures =D
1 comment:
Sorry to hear that your bees left their hive. My two hives are getting along nicely so far.
One hive is stronger than the other so I'm keeping an eye on the weaker one to see how it makes out.
My hives are about ten miles from my home so I don't get the chance to look in on them as often as I would like, but maybe thats a good thing then I'm not tempted to bother them too much :-)
Good luck on your next attempt! !
Jay
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