General bee keeping advice

[OBLIGATED]

Damned bees absconded then came back.Gone again!

[POL]

Originally Posted by OBLIGATED

Damned bees absconded then came back.Gone again!

Is it possible that bees absconded, than new swarm settled in and absconded?
Hive to hot at certain times of the season?

I never kept bees in the subtropics, but my understanding is that since the bees do not need to store for long winters, they tend to swarm and abscond more often.
My suggestion is change the hive exposure to the sun, and make sure a good water source is near by.
Plus regular inspections to catch problems early

BTW, if shorts, light shirt, and a vail are not sufficient, it might be time to requeen. Or at least slow down. Something is setting them off.

[rojodiablo]

Originally Posted by OBLIGATED

Damned bees absconded then came back. Gone again!

Keep an eye on that, the temperament of the colony, and the physical size of the bees....
While I don't have many problems with Africanized bees, I have taken out two hives recently that were man-eaters. I took between 30-60 stings in a matter of minutes on each of them. enough stings from the one hive that I could TASTE the poison in my saliva, and my poop stunk ungodly the next day and a half.
The African bees have the tendency to split quickly, abscond very frequently, as POL pointed out. Their territory was the savannas, and they would get boom and bust nectar flows, so they evolved to abandon hives fast, and rebuild quickly. They SAY the Africans are physically smaller, I can't say for sure. We have an area here that has super docile, very small bees. I think a commercial guy is using them somewhere around, and the theory was the smaller bees are more able to deal with the Varroa mites, and the smaller larvae are much less desirable and it may help keep infestations down. Also, they are said to be more hygienic.
So I am not sold on small bees being the violent ones, not from my experience here in SoCal. But it's worth keeping it in your thoughts.

[rojodiablo]

Originally Posted by POL

Were the dead bees in the hive on the bottom board, in front of the hive with missing heads, gone and only scratches on the hive.
Don’t discount predators such as skunks, wasps, etc.
And you need to be more specific about the signs and symptoms.
For instance. Brood gone, as no sign of it, or dead. Were the hives queen right. Did the empty brood cells look normal (smooth) or were chewed out. Etc.

Could simply be that they didn’t like the home and left if there is no sign of them.
A skunk can wipe out a hive in a few nights, wasps can do the same.

It was a pesticide thing; a local commercial guy from the OC beekeeping club and I talked, he had the same issue; found it was pesticides.
This year was pretty good, I do a lot of cutouts, a few swarm captures, and I did split my own hives pretty well. Went as high as 22 hives, back down now with some weather losses, and a couple failed queens, I have 16 strong ones going into winter.
Learned a lot about feeding, watching them for dearth in one of the yards I keep them. The fire in Alpine, Ca San Diego was only a mile away, and the localized super-heat dried out the sumac and buckwheat so badly, it was astounding. Like 55 days over 90 with low humidity, then topped by a local heat factor of 110+ for almost two weeks from the fire, it made super heat flowing down the canyons.
Pulled 19 gallons of honey; not a bad season!!!!

[OBLIGATED]

Originally Posted by rojodiablo

Keep an eye on that, the temperament of the colony, and the physical size of the bees....
While I don't have many problems with Africanized bees, I have taken out two hives recently that were man-eaters. I took between 30-60 stings in a matter of minutes on each of them. enough stings from the one hive that I could TASTE the poison in my saliva, and my poop stunk ungodly the next day and a half.
The African bees have the tendency to split quickly, abscond very frequently, as POL pointed out. Their territory was the savannas, and they would get boom and bust nectar flows, so they evolved to abandon hives fast, and rebuild quickly. They SAY the Africans are physically smaller, I can't say for sure. We have an area here that has super docile, very small bees. I think a commercial guy is using them somewhere around, and the theory was the smaller bees are more able to deal with the Varroa mites, and the smaller larvae are much less desirable and it may help keep infestations down. Also, they are said to be more hygienic.
So I am not sold on small bees being the violent ones, not from my experience here in SoCal. But it's worth keeping it in your thoughts.

The bees were SUPPOSED to be Italian bees.I had them along a tree line.Locals here told me to put them in the open and hot wire around the hives.Going to try again next spring at my kids property.
I had no issues checking the hive in shorts,flip flops and a tank top and no veil until it was time to harvest the honey.Then I taped my pants and sleeves shut.
I recently renovated the house and found a huge hornet nest.They may have irritated the bees?

[rojodiablo]

Originally Posted by OBLIGATED

The bees were SUPPOSED to be Italian bees.I had them along a tree line.Locals here told me to put them in the open and hot wire around the hives.Going to try again next spring at my kids property.
I had no issues checking the hive in shorts,flip flops and a tank top and no veil until it was time to harvest the honey.Then I taped my pants and sleeves shut.
I recently renovated the house and found a huge hornet nest.They may have irritated the bees?

Nah; hornets feed on other bugs, and will raid a hive to take larvae especially on a dead-out. Crazy to see them fly off carrying a larvae as big as they are!!
The bees won't mind you much, and the hornets will make them a bit testy, because they may try to sneak into an active hive.
If the bees run low of food, they may abscond. I'm learning, that when you strip honey...... no matter WHAT, after you pull honey off, feed them a 1/1 sugar ratio ASAP and they will go right back to work. If you don't, they see the apocalypse and may very well abscond.
When they have a building spree going on, they will be meaner. When they are low on resources, they won't fight back nearly as much; they know better than to waste a lot of precious energy unless totally necessary.
If they turn mean as hell, likely they requeened, and the new queen mated with some aggressive drones, and the die is cast, that may be their new nature. You can try this: Kill the queen off, and install a new docile queen after 36/48hrs, but not much more. They will take to the new queen, and in 4,5 weeks, the nasty genetics will fall off.