My hive was abandoned - is this the queen left behind? Only a handful of other bees remained after a yellowjacket wasp attack.
Posted Nov 20, 2022, 3:16 AM UTC
15632
Put her in a mini nuc with what's left of the bees.
61
Was only her and 3 workers, that's all remaining from the 2 hives. :-(
8
Have you any bee keeping friends?
2
Ask for a cup of bees and alittle comb.
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Alas, no friendly beeks nearly. She's already frozen 😔
1
Your bees probably didn’t die from being attacked by wasps. What was your strategy for treating for mites?
35
Her majesty in the flesh
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Did you have an entrance reducer in on the small opening back when the nectar flow ended?
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Since around late Sept, still struggling to identify when nectar flow winds down.
13
Until you identify that, always keep a reducer in.
12
Some of those cells seem off to me. Do you have a picture of this frame or the brood on it?
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Hive A was robbed:
This is late Oct
https://imgur.com/a/6ZAuCFX
https://imgur.com/a/tw0QJe1
And post robbing
https://imgur.com/a/iDVdlft
Hive B is the photo on original post, this is the only other photo from that hive.
​
But think the hive was declining before the wasp event.
Edit: hive B was not robbed, all honey left behind.
7
Agreed your hive was robbed, but robbing usually only occurs when there are not enough bees to defend the size of your hive. Unless you expanded your hive too quickly, disease likely caused your population to dwindle, leading to the robbing. Looking at some of those cells beneath your queen, I’m wondering if your hive is infected with foulbrood. Im not an expert, and it’s hard to tell in the close up pictures (the ones with the queen), but some cells look really dark and some others look like brown melted pupae. If this is actually the case you will need to reach out to your state agriculture department and report this.
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It's not foulbrood. There's a horrible stench with foulbrood. It's unmistakable. The brown stuff is pollen or bee bread. OP's bees died of rampant varroa infestation.
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Your bees in hive B succumbed to mites. This is a distinctive end-state that is indicative of a very heavy mite load with viral infections vectored into the colony by them.
It is NOT foulbrood. If it were foulbrood, there'd be a terrible smell, and you would be able to verify by sticking a toothpick in an obviously sick larva and roping it out to a distance of about an inch.
That you didn't immediately notice and talk about a stench is ample indication that it wasn't foulbrood.
This is parasitic mite syndrome. It happens to inadequately treated colonies in September through November in the northern hemisphere. I imagine that you found little or no brood, and that this happened suddenly to a hive that you thought was mostly okay. Are you doing mite counts? And if so, what method? Sugar shakes?
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I’m curious what specifically in the photos makes you so certain this is mites. I’m not saying it’s not, just not seeing people cite any particular reasons
1
Varroa is the thing you look at first. Always. It's hugely more common than the rest of the problems that affect bees combined. You rule out varroa before you start suggesting other problems.
In this case, we can't rule it out because OP fits the classic profile for varroa-related collapse.
Please reflect for a minute on the fact that everyone on this subreddit is obsessed with Varroa destructor and how to control it, and consider that there is in fact good reason for this obsession because varroa affects every colony on this planet except those in Australia (and Australia is having a really bad outbreak right now, so pretty soon it'll be every honeybee everywhere). Varroa is a lethal problem all beekeepers have to manage.
Then read this: https://www.reddit.com/r/Beekeeping/comments/yujno0/hive_death/iwe8vg4
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[deleted]
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Yes it’s a queen
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r/drakethetype to do something like this.
-5
That's her
Thanks, sad. Still trying to piece together what happened.
Probably a mite bomb wiped out your hive, the yellow jackets found it was weak.