Aarrggh! We’re losing a colony…

Posted by Jon on Jul 16, 2010 in Hive problems | 7 comments

Whilst our other colonies are loving the sunshine and making the most of the ample nectar flow around, one of our colonies has been causing us concern. The big, healthy colonies rumble in this weather with the bees coming and going, and the others fanning to keep the hive cool, but this little one barely manages a murmur. Watching the entrance has revealed that fewer and fewer bees are entering and leaving so we bit the bullet last night and had a look inside.

This colony is one that I cut out a few weeks ago and although the number of bees was low, it still looked enough to get going as it had all its comb and brood with it. As soon as the hive was opened, it became very clear that things are seriously amiss. Not only were there very few bees but the comb was irregular and on inspecting  a frame, I immediately saw a superseding queen cell surrounded by capped drone cells. Closer inspection showed that the eggs in the comb were not from a queen but from workers – they are smaller in size, often not centrally placed (as the queen has a longer abdomen she can reach to the bottom of the cell) and often 2 or more to a cell.

(click to enlarge)

Workers can only lay eggs if there is no viable queen in the hive – the queen transmits pheremones that stops the workers laying eggs whilst she is in residence. As the worker bees can only lay unfertilized eggs, only drones will grow and I saw a high ratio of drones to workers as I took a closer look at the bees. The drone cells are clearly recognisable as being from a worker as they are in a standard worker size cell as opposed to the enlarged cells that a queen bee would use.

As there was an opened queen cell, there is the possibility that a young virgin queen had recently emerged but I could see no sign of her.

And finally, to add further stress to the hive, wax moth larvae could be seen making their way across the base of the comb….

So what to do? The number of bees in the hive is so few that it does not make any sense to jeopardise the health of another hive to incorporate them. In fact, as we have laying worker(s) any combination of colonies would be dangerous as the workers could kill the queen in the healthy colony. Having read everything I can find about combining colonies, this really is not an option at this stage unless the colony is thriving and you can ensure that non of the laying workers are introduced (by leaving all the bees some distance away so that only foragers can find their way back to the hive).

But I still want to give these guys a shot at getting their colony back together so have decided to watch them carefully over the next few days to see if I can see a queen whilst getting rid of as many of the wax moth larvae as possible. The other option to consider is transfering some brood in from a stronger colony with some nurse bees so I will probably give this a go in the hope that it helps. One of my stronger colonies won’t miss a frame of brood at this stage.

If this fails, hopefully the foragers will naturally transfer to one of the neighbouring hives (if they haven’t already as the bee volume is much lower than when collected).

After that nature will take its course….