Downward Spiral/The Numbers Game

It was shortly after the cold snap and snow fall from Mother's day when I discovered devastating losses in Delores' hive. The bees in that hive could not handle the swing in temperature and conditions. I had seen a few mites in the bottom board of both hives. It did not occur to me previous that such a low mite count would have affected that colony. I knew there were some dead bees in the package. In my inexperienced estimate, Delores was down to roughly 1500 workers after that storm. I had also read initial numbers drop before they begin increasing. Rain and cold weather persisted. There were many more bees lost. At the end of the first three weeks, I noticed some of the brood beginning to hatch. I looked very closely at the mite count. 8 to 12 mites is kinda high for the springtime. Then it dawned on me. 10 to 12 is high for a full hive of bees. We have maybe a thousand bees in this box. They were too stressed and week from the parasites that they couldn't survive the cold weather. They spent too much energy trying to keep a brood box warm and couldn't spare the time to break away for a snack. They easily starved themselves to death.

I began dusting with powdered sugar. This had an immediate effect on the mites. I still have extremely low counts on Doris' hive after a few treatments. Powdered sugar is an effective mite control for our purposes. Delores' mites were also very low. Unfortunately, her worker bees were also very low. To help with the evening chills, I made a four frame nuc box and moved Delores in to ease the stress of managing the space within her hive. This maneuver  also had an immediate effect. The workers became much more active. They seemed to be relieved in their smaller, more efficient space. Within minutes, they were moving more energetically around the frames, less focused on warming the brood and more focused on getting some work done.

A mere three days later, disaster struck. At some point in that three days, an invasion of beetles moved in. Deloris did not have the numbers to battle the dozens of pillagers that moved into the nuc box. She and the workers cleaned up as much of the meager stores they had, and they abandoned the hive in search of something safer. Farewell to Delores.

All that was left in the box was some abandoned brood and a lot of beetles. I checked Doris to make sure she was okay. She was hard at work. Her numbers steadily increasing. She too had beetles. Doris had plenty of help around to keep those beetles under control. I swept away all the beetles I could find. Then I placed the abandoned comb from the other hive into Doris' brood box so they could spread out a little more easily. I topped off her sugar water and left her the rest of Delores' pollen patty.

Today I stopped by to check on the beetle count. The twenty or so beetles they had cornered at the entrance yesterday were nowhere to be found. I inspected everything very closely. No signs of any beetles at all. In three days, the beetles drove out the bees from one hive. 24 hours later, gone without a trace. The more frequently the hives are inspected, I think, the better control can be had on the pests. I have been looking into beetle traps. It seems, for now, close inspections are most important to control the beetles.

The mites also need to be closely checked. Currently, Doris' hive drops from 1 to 3 mites a day. I don't feel like this is a high number for the 5 to 6 thousand bees I'm guessing we have in there right now (that number may be optimistic but that colony is growing daily).

When I moved the other hive into the nuc box, we inspected Doris and found two workers with deformed wings. After all the problems with the other hive, I quickly began shopping for mite control. Fortunately, there was only one form readily available and it risked killing the queen (and it was high priced). I decided to wait until after a couple more inspections. I have not found any, at all, other bees with deformed wings. The mite counts continue to be very small. Those two girls may possibly have been from the initial brood when the mite counts were higher.

I will continue to avoid using chemicals in the hives as long as I can. I plan to continue to manually remove beetles and treat mites with powdered sugar until more drastic measures are needed. With only one hive, this should not be too demanding.

Today, I noticed bees working most of the comb left behind by the other hive. It even seemed like they were caring for some of the abandoned brood. Perhaps not all was lost when Delores swarmed.

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