9/27/09 – All Good Things Must Come to an End
While at Keown Orchards last week, I spoke to Ken Warchol about my predicament – and interestingly, another first year beekeeper there was querying him on the exact same problem! We both had lost our queen, introduced another, and then ended up with a laying worker hive.
I had been interested in his thoughts on whether I should let the hive run it’s course, or be pro-active, and take steps to shut down the hive, and store it for the winter. He said that I could just let the bees die-out, and then pull the hive, and store it.
I was prepared to do that, but kept worrying about whether I could be asking for problems, as wax moths could find their way to the hive, and do some serious damage to the very valuable drawn out frames. In a normal hive, the moths aren’t an issue, as the bees can take care of themselves, but with so few workers, my hive is not ready to defend itself against any threat.
On Thursday, we attended the Big E – the New England States Fair – and one of the stops included the Hampden County Beekeepers table, where one of Margaret’s friend’s husband was working – he had answered some initial questions I had about the loss of my queen.
He and the other gentleman there were not in favor of letting the hive run it’s course, as there really was no upside – only downside if I lost the hive to wax moths, so today I decided I’d take the hive in for the winter.
Basically, I needed to move the frames away from the hive, shake the bees off the frames, and then clean up the hive bodies and frames, and get them ready for storage. Likely the field bees will immediately go back to the hive location, and some will just hang out wondering how they woke up in some strange bed.
I’m glad I decided to do the ’shake out’, as when I opened up the lower hive body, I saw lots of wax pieces on the bottom board, which meant that the bees already had a winter friend in the hive.
Mouse Droppings?
Yes, those wax pieces were from two frames of un-drawn foundation that the mouse ate through to set up shop. Very glad that he picked the only two undrawn frames to build his nest, so I didn’t really lose much – just need to replace the foundation in those frames.
If you give a mouse a beehive...
Again, during the shake-out, the bees were happily showing off their Nassanoff glands in action – some of the bees that were just on the hive body itself were actively letting their sisters and brothers know where they were!
1, 2, 3, 4, get your butts up off the floor!
After I had shaken all the bees off the frames of both hive bodies, I went to check on the bee ‘pile’ that I had created – most of the bees were back at the hive, but there was a small swarm like collection of bees left at ground zero. Could this be a group that was surrounding my laying worker?
A huge swarm of perhaps 50-100 bees
After going back to the hive location, and seeing how many bees were there, it was pretty obvious that my 10,000 bees that I started with in April had dwindled to less than 1000. I’d guess that at a peak I had 40,000 or so, when things were humming along well – then we hit the wall.
However, we’re in good shape for next spring, as we’ve got 16 out of 20 frames already drawn out, so the new bees won’t have to waste time building out comb – instead they can get busy with nectar and pollen collection, and making us some honey!
The last of the mohicans
