Beekeeping | How To Save A Failing Hive & Get It Through Winter
Beekeeping becomes sad if you have a failing hive. Today we'll inspect a failing hive and I'll give you solutions to fix it!
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Whoa, you made it all the way down here! Thank you ♥️ Love you
What about putting into 5 frame nukes. 2
David do you have a extra nuc that you could put into this hive to fix it .
Great video David!! I just went through my 17 hives and found a couple just like this one. I moved both hives into a couple of 2 story 5 frame nucs, will feed them and will see how they do. I've had great luck with 5 frame nucs but I can't remember seeing any in your yard or hear you discussing them very much. Is there a reason? Thanks for all you do and see you soon in Louisville!!!!
The nuc yard is not located here.
Wall Walker. A term I learned from you David. With that supercedure queen cell I am wondering if she was a virgin and not yet mated, which would be a problem that far north I am guessing. I think your solution makes sense. Nice work my friend!
That was a great video and happy that the festival went great for you! That's a good looking hat, i will definatly be picking one up from you in Kentucky this January!
I inherited 3 neglected hives a few weeks ago. They look about what the one in the video did. I found a queen in one that was laying. I combined the weakest hive with this hive and have been feeding it 2:1 sugar syrup with a hive top feeder. They have drained the feeder twice in 3 days!
This is so helpful. I am new to beekeeping. I have a problematic hive that has been queenless since summer after the original queen left with a swarm. I’ve replaced the queen and they’ve raised a queen. But none of the queens stuck around. Im glad for this video as I’m having similar hive issues unfortunately it is my only hive. I have 6 out of 8 frames full of bees but without a queen there are no new bees 😮 and now they have been consuming their own honey for food even though I’ve given them sugar water. I will try to get them through winter and will add two new hives in Spring and consider combining. Thanks again for this video.
It seem that your bees has been sworming, and that queen is new queen, so she is not really ready to lays eggs yet, but its seems the queen already pregnant . Just wait for 6 days from that moment, if she's laying eggs. It's just my ASSUMTION n SUGGESTION.
This video is right on time for me.. my first year... thank you
Very good video!
I started beekeeping in the spring of this year. I started two colonies in 8-frame deep boxes from 2 nucs. While installing each nuc, I noticed one colony was a little smaller than the other. The bigger colony exploded through spring and summer, but the smaller one seemed to be struggling with getting their numbers up. It finally got big enough for me to add a medium super, but they still haven't drawn out half of that super. The guy I got my bees from said they look fine, but I'm not so sure. There is a lot of nectar on the drawn frames, with patches of capped brood, and a "fair" amount of larvae. I'mvery concerned about whether or not they have the numbers to make it through winter. I'm going to go through that colony to see if I can find 4-6 frames of brood. If I do, I'll feed them like crazy, and hope for the best.
What about reducing to 1 deep brood box?
I've had success doing single deeps. Sometimes I think it is much better.
David i have a hive that only has about 100 bee maybe i saw the queen small amount of brood. It Nov 2 i need to do something but not sure whst to do. I dint think they will make it throw winter. Do you have a Suggestion for me? I thought about putting that hive on top of my good hive but I don’t think that’s the answer I don’t know if I need to take a couple frames of bees out of my good hive they have plenty of honey i also need to put winter feed in as the rain season is starting. It will be 59 tomorrow so i could go in
"I would be shocked if we saw a queen" ... I've said that twice after searching through a hive with unexplained dwindling populations and not being able to find eggs or very young larvae, then found her off by herself running around on a resource frame at the edge of the hive (which is why we now check EVERY frame, not just the ones she's likely to be on). Once, she perked up and resumed doing her job and the hive made it through winter but just wasn't very productive, in the other hive she was gone not much later and the hive failed and got robbed out. I'm thinking next time that happens when there's still enough time to make a new queen, I'll give them a frame or two of eggs and brood from another hive so they can make an emergency queen (or to keep them busy while I order a new queen) and then take the nonlaying queen and stick her in a nuc with a couple frames of brood and nurse bees and some feed and see what she does... same thing for when we find a hive where there are a few eggs but nowhere near enough, hunt her down and remove and replace her.
i have this exact problem. i had brood end of september. probably a full frame and a half.... i saw a queen cup, just 1... and it looked like something came out of it so im thinking maybe they swarmed and i just didnt catch it. but now in october i SEE my queen... but no eggs or larvae. i have no idea what to do. im a first year beekeeper and i dont have another hive to combine with nor any queens to replace her with.... i popped a half gallon of 1:1 syrup on there with some hive alive in it and im hoping for the best :(
Take it away to a friends yard at least 3 miles from its home hive location. Then feed it sugar water half hot water and half sugar by volume. Otherwise it will be robbed to death and especially when you try feeding. The robber bees will be lost and have to join the hive in its new location.
So what do you do if you don't have a hive to combine it with.... Try to get a replacement queen? Feed them like heck and hope for the best? I just don't know
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Thank you
I would propose to 3. CONSOLIDATE. Take the 10 best frames and remove the top box completely. Shake all the bees down into the bottom box and consolidate their resources. With as weak as that hive is, you could possibly be better off consolidating down into a 5 frame NUC, or an 8 frame box if you have one.
What would do is take out five frames on bottom and put the five frames on top down below.
Overnight for this week at work.... glad I get to watch this video so early!!
What if you have good amount of bees but the varroa load is big? Also I think I have old queens. I’m not gonna lie they have been neglected because of well, life. I’m trying to make sure they survive as good as I can now. It’s slightly 52 farenheit atm. But in few Days Will Be 46. I have fed 18kg of sugar made into syrup to both hives. And now I plan on putting on a inner cover to give them an above exit and also I’m going to treat with oxalic acid. Was gonna put a piece of absorbing material between cover and roof. The roof is polystyrene. I say a lot of varroa because I saw a lot of white specs on the cells so I assumed that is varroa poop.
Thanks. I did learn from you on what to do with weak hive.
I have been a “ victim “ of buying 3 pound packages from “ money making interested only company “ that were of so bad of quality that they had not a chance of surviving ! One package had a virgin queen in it and the included queen was killed . Their packages all failed due to lack of serval . They “ jacked me around “ for 18 months and the replacements that they sent me were dead on arrival at my post office . They had died because their cans of sugar water had not been punctured and they starved to death . They charged me for express 3 day USPS shipping but the shipping label was for ground shipping ( 4 days or more ) . The shipping label was $7.00 and they charged me $35.00 for 3 day shipping . They should have given me a refund but , instead , argued with me that it was the post office’s responsibility but the post office said that they were not responsible because the packages had not been damaged ! I was caught between two different opinions and ended up losing altogether : Sweet Mountain Honey Bees ; beware because they totally didn’t take responsibility for all of my packages falling to survive and refused to take responsibility for their “ : live delivery guarantee . !! 🤷♂️😤😡
clearly what happened was the hive for some reason swarmed (mabey because of the hive beetle problem the mother queen didnt like) evident that the queen cells were empty. battle for control of the hive already happened, just before the mother queen swarmed off with over half the hive, leaving the winner, the new daughter queen in control after she killed her sibling queens, how ever she left to go get mated and just returned about 6 to 7 days before this vid, and is now laying, this hive needs to be condensed to a nuc to control the hive beetle, it will very soon be a strong nuc and will need to go into a single 9 to 10 frame deep in 1 and a half month since all the frames for a single deep are already built out, its just about laying and capping, reduce NOW to a nuc and start feeding sugar water so the nuc can concentrate on brood making, in less than 2 weeks all those caped cell will be new bees doubling the numbers to preserve the hive if U act quickly.
Does anyone have answers for a beat down, gut punched and defeated new beekeeper😭I just started this year with a nuc and it was doing great. It grew to fill 2 deep boxes and a super that was about 95% full of capped honey. It was late but I put on another super just to see what would happen. There was little capped honey but the frames were almost completely drawn out. They were doing good when I inspected them a couple of weeks ago and I was very pleased. I was out of town last week and when I got home I checked it and all I saw were yellow jackets flying in and out so I figured I better inspect it and when I opened it up the honey bees were gone🤬Does anyone have any suggestions as to why they would have left? PLEASE HELP🙏🏻
This would be a great discussion for my livestream this Thursday 7pm CT : kzhead.infoPaB0kesN_zg
I will be there, because I am frustrated.
Maybe you can paper add them to another hive?
Not all of it makes sense to me in the first half of the video. If they swarmed and never had a new queen, there would not be any brood now. So if it would not have a queen, she would have to be gone 10 days ago, not earlier. If this happens to me, I would say either I have killed her in the last supervision 2 weeks ago, or I did a mite treatment that killed her or it was robbery. As it is, I would say its just very cold, the queen stopped laying in preparation of frost. Some colonies stop earlier and other later. Given they have a lot of brood but not enough bees to warm a larger nest, it makes sense to not lay more eggs. Having so much brood at this time speaks a bit for the possibility of a mite infestion - a mite infested colony looses numbers of bees but try to produce a lot of brood to compensate.
Your videos are so helpful thank you so much💖
My experience it is true and if there is a queen in a noisy hive she is no good
Great video! This is our first year with two hives, and both seem to be in this situation. One was thriving until we started the ApiGuard treatments, it seems. By the way, I noticed you have the screened bottom board. We do, too. Do you leave the screen in place all winter, or replace the bottom board?
Would combine the two halfs and get rid of a box?
exact same scenario happened to my hive. I'm trying option #1. They are taking nearly a half gallon every 2 days. how long until I should inspect again?
was excited to see those mint wheels come out for the fix haha Either the candy or that awesome cart.
You failed to tell us what to do if there wasn't a queen at all????
Do they sell queens this late in the season?
No stores either
Ŕeduce then to a single seep or double nuc and feed. Probably just a young queen that needs a chance. The defensive bees would prob be the old queen
I just did this with a weak hive!
Nice job
All the older Beekeepers say noises hive is queenless
As a first year beekeeper, this has been a very helpful video for me. I lost a hive due to wax moths and two others are struggling with no brood in one and very little in another. I have been feeding the hives with your recipe and a couple are doing well. This video has helped me determine that combining is the best answer for me. Thank you for all the knowledge and encouragement you bring with this channel.
This video has crazy good value. 10/10. Videos like this are priceless. The video quality is amazing. I can see into every single cell. That is amazing video work. And, I can hear every word with perfect clarity. There isn't any background noise. That's huge. Let's say I've watched this twice and I'm listening to it for a 3rd time while watching dishes on the TV, I'll still be able to understand even if the TV is 20 plus yards away from the sink. I just have problems with following videos with lots of background noise, kinda fuzzy video, and not very clear audio. I'm learning a lot just watching David pull the hive apart. I couldn't belive that even David has hives with wonky comb and queen cells. This kind of hive evaluation is priceless. The video was extremely well organized for people like me who has problems with hearing "random thoughts." When I was in college, I had a few classes where I was absolutely, completely lost. The teacher would be "winging it" with I perceived as bring "random teaching." There would be people just loving it though. People just yelling out answers and everyone would be raising their hands. I would sit there just lost and frustrated. I would change teachers to people who teach more like David. My brain just needs some sort or focus and organization. I would always get an A in those classes after changing teachers. The problem came up when the only teacher who taught a class was "bad for me." I'll never forget sitting in some of those classes just completely bewildered at how people could possibly follow what was being taught. Well done.
/wont most of the bees die anyway because they are not winter bees? Why combine if they are going to die except for the brood. They will use the resources from the hive you combine them with and then die.
What if you only have one hive and your queen is a couple years old ? My hive hasn't drawn out a full single deep .
I’m a first year beekeeper and I have a hive very much like that one. I’m coming to the end of a ApiGuard treatment. If I find the queen I’ll probably pinch her and combine the hive with the one next to it. The funny thing is that this weak hive was my very best all summer. I even got some honey from it. Perhaps, it swarmed ???
Your queen should have already started back laying from your treatment but you may want to look real close for egg’s because you know the queen laying was interrupted some from your treatment. Also look real Close to make sure she is in there.