🔵Why do bees leave/abscond in fall and leave their honey?
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- Опубліковано 1 лис 2019
- Many beekeepers lose their bees in Fall or in winter due to lack of care in late summer early fall. Here we explain how to prevent this from happening in the future.
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Kamon, Thank you so much for this video-so glad I am hearing this at an early stage of learning to care for bees (still year one). I appreciate your honesty and these "bee side chats." I couldn't agree more in what you are saying about the alcohol wash-no one that loves their bees wants to do this, BUT for the health of the hive, it is necessary. I too started out with a "treatment free" mindset. Changed my mind quickly as I went through this summer into fall. Your advice may have saved one of my hives-we'll see next spring. Coming from a medical background, I've always been a patient advocate-whats best for them...it followed through in my care of purple martins, blue birds (management/hobby) and when I raised chickens. Bees are no different. If I am going to raise them, I need to be responsible and give them the best chance to do what they do best. God bless!
Really good to hear someone speak truth instead of trying to peddle something with a fancy name or try to gain popularity with false gimmicks and silly instruction on easy/lazy beekeeping.
Thank you for sharing. I went through the same thing for 3 years and realized the major challenges of beekeeping. And cost.
One thing I really respect about your videos is that you keep your opinion unbiased and focused on the matter at hand.
Fall absconding: Very well explained Kamon. Thanks again!
Kamon, I ran into this situation for two seasons. I kept my mite levels low for those two years and the absconding happened anyway. In winter at 28 degrees I stood there and watched as bee after bee flew off to die. Nothing was left in the hives.
This year I started on all new foundation. I scorched the boxes, new frames, etc. I basically burned and threw out frames and comb to over 65 deeps. I could have irradiated but what if it were chemical and not viral?
This year I re-started with eight packages. Once the bees established with open brood I put in Apivar. I tested at the end of June for mite loads. It didn't do much for control. I was averaging 2-3 mites per 100 on a package. I went to my old true treatment that always reduced my numbers Apiguard. After four weeks I checked mite loads. Now it's August and I have 4 mites per 100 on average. I did what you were doing with the Oxalic acid vapor to knock down or level out the loads of mites. I used sticky boards to see any droppings. I would see fifty or so and that was it. I was ready to give up this fall and do something else after 20 years of keeping bees. However, I kept to the regiment and fed, fed, fed. I kept the pollen patties on the bees.
Yesterday I took a look at the colonies and found higher populations than expected. I still need some more food on the hives (getting cold).
I found out that of nine colonies (a swarm came in a hive body in June) only two were weak. I'll deal with that on Wednesday and putting the bees in five frame nucs to tighten the space for winter.
Only a few weeks left to push the weight on the bees that still need it. I've got extra boxes in storage with honey that I'll put on top or fill in.
Late November or early December I'll do an Oxalic acid vaporization on the hives during a warm spell. I want to kill the phoretic mites as much as possible.
I just find it so hard to believe that in todays age of varroa, the breeders aren't treating packages before shipping them out to customers.
Just my thoughts.
Spot on with your content and am forwarding/sharing your videos with my beekeeping friends! Still have one "hold out" in the group doing "all natural"... I'd thought to suggest he contact me come spring to get more bees but on second thought I want someone who will keep my bees alive not kill them! Keep the videos coming even if you cannot inspect a hive - up north we have "beekeeping withdrawal" - a horrible winter disease - only cure is dandelion and maple bloom!
New subscriber. I am not a bee keeper but I really enjoy watching bee keeping and the honey process. I really like your direct and articulate approach. Thank you.
I like the honesty of Kamon and being straight forward and that Kamon is not pushing sales like many others do with their infomercials .
I like to hear the good, the bad and the ugly.
Thank you Kamon and family for teaching us the tricks of the trade to keep bees alive.
Thanks for the kind words J&B
@@kamonreynolds
Thank you all and your welcome.
Thanks so much. This is my 4 th year of beekeeping and this is the first year I’ve gotten any honey. I’ve lost colonies altogether. I’m wondering if I’ve been nursing sick hives and that’s why they never produce. Your videos are the most helpful out there. Thank you again
We've had two good freezes in Oklahoma. Supers off in October, and will start OA treatments and put sugar on weaker hives this weekend. Thanks for the video.
Thank you, This was helpful. I am in my third year of beekilling here in Michigan and have become frustrated. I thought this was my year but nope. I didn't even know absconding was a thing until I checked my hive and found a fully furnished environment with no bees.
Another good video Kaymon... I like your pun about the bees going viral and leaving the hive. (due to virus)!
Next spring I would like to start raising my own Queens. Would love it if you could come out with a step by step guide for newbies like myself! I know you put out some videos about that but one where it's all laid out linearly would help my feeble brain!
Great job explaining the full cycle of not having mites under control and 'shooting from the hip" . It does take a few years of the experience of loosing colonies to realize that it can be prevented.
Dang! I'm at year five and agree with 95% of what you said. Wishing I knew this stuff because it would've saved me a lot of time, money and heartache!😩
Thanks for all you care and knowledge for bee keeping. Your videos are great !
Thanks so much for taking time out to encourage good bee husbandry ++
Was enlightening for me here in South Texas!
Kamon, that's one of the things I like about you, you tell it like it is.
My favorite thing about Kamon too,he makes me proud lol he says all the things I think and All the things the others won't,either because either they don't have the guts or the sense.Good job Kamon
@@badassbees3680 Yes sir!
@@badassbees3680 Yes sir!
@@badassbees3680 thanks fellas
Kamon,
Thanks for the information.
I am going in my second winter of bee keeping. I have not treated thus far, but I truly believe you are correct.
I am going to research for past video's you have put out on treating your bees.
Any suggestions are always welcome.
Very Good information coming from a wonderful Beekeeper,
I'm in JAMAICA managing two Apiaries consisting of over 45 colonies however my problems are the Apiary much further away from home is doing quite well,the one nearest to my home was,doing quite well up to the end of October is doing poorly,
Reasons are I somehow treated the mites at least a month too late,
Hense i suffered heavy swarming and,even quite a number absconded totally,
I have to be rebuilding them from what i called scratch.
Sorry to here that Hubert. We all have been there at one time. These days I do everything I can to stay in front of the varroa mites. It can be laborious but that is where we are right now. Thanks for the kind words and best of luck in 2020!
Kamon this is only my second year and I lost 2 out of 3 hives. It was disappointing. But your video answered all my questions, now I know what happened to my bees.
You are the realest bee master on you tube
Exactly what happened to me this year! Thanks for the good info!
I became a better beekeeper when internally I began referring to myself as a " Bee Rancher'' and changed my mindset to think more like a cattle or sheep rancher and treat the bees like livestock. My hive loss rate has plummeted since then . Thanks for posting this
Excellent talk. I totally agree on the alcohol wash. You can also use soapy water to replace the alcohol that's what they use at the USDA Honey Bee Lab at LSU. I use sticky boards monthly and alcohol wash a minimum of 4 times a year or if the sticky boards have more than a couple of mites after 72 hours. Not too long ago I got the chance to talk to a fellow from the Bee Lab about varroa and viruses. I asked him how come if all hives have these viruses why is that varroa is considered the vector for their transmission. He told me that when varroa take in the DWV it becomes more potent and virulent then it is transferred into the host larva causing Deformed Wing Virus because of the weakened state of the host's immune system. He didn't mention Chronic bee paralysis virus (CBPV) and how the varroa increased it's occurrence. DWV is also transferred through feeding and the queen can pass it to her eggs. So it's not hard to see how a mite load can snowball into a catastrophe for what appears to be an otherwise strong and healthy hive.
Good morning Bubba!
@@danskisbees7348 Good morning Dan, I hope all is well with you and you girls. I think I'm ready for the cool season with good populations and plenty of stores. Our club Outreach Officer that does presentations in the community for us is working a Non-Profit group to send beekeepers to the Bahamas to train and re-establish their honeybee population so I threw my hat in ring to go if they actually get the program off the ground.
@@privatebubba8876 They're going to need all the help they can get, we were very fortunate on that one. I'm almost ready, I condensed everyone before it got cold. I'm still treating, need to make some more feeder shims and then they'll be good. I hope you get to go, it'll be an interesting experience.
After my 1st yr of getting pkg bee's they left (both hives) the following late spring after we moved to a new property that had more food. Bought another 2 pkgs the following spring, they all left early fall. No signs of mites either time or beetles. Some ants & a couple wasps found hibernating. Caught a swarm this spring, that was cool. And so far no mites or beetles. Still going strong. Fingers crossed, I'm expecting spring to change thing's.
You-tube still doesn't have a "Love" button. What's up with that?
But, Thank you for what you do.
As always a great informative video! So one of my hives absconded last week :-( and I was wondering if you had any input as it did so one week after i had finished a 4 week mite treatment. I feel like I've been diligent with management, they have always been properly fed, we still have plenty for the bees to forage on as we are in Los Angeles and there were no queen cells being built. Before the mite treatment the count was just under 3% and after testing the other two hives post treatment, the count was 0.3%. The hive has been struggling all year though with a poorly laying queen, is she the reason why they left perhaps?
Thank you Kamon Renolds for sharing bee information, I love bees this year I got 3 nucs and I'm learning to keep them healthy.
Thanks Kamon for another informative video!! I had been thinking about different genetics and you answered those thoughts as well!! Wish me luck on getting my commercially-produced, Florida bee packages through the winter! LOL I'm looking for a local breeder but not having much luck. Maybe that is the niche I will fill in the future!!
I'm that guy. I have lost lots of bees. Hive beetles and mites. Thanks for the info. Maybe next year I well do better following your advice.
Thanks for sharing Kamon, cheers from Canada
Super helpful information for me.
Thank you for sharing your knowledge!
Not boring at all! Subscribed after 1st minute. Researching now to start an apiary in Spring in the North Carolina mountains.
Thank you
I really do appreciate these videos Kamon... thank you so much ......
I agree completely. I have tried the VHS queens from several sources and really didn't see any difference. Once the mite load hits a certain threshold it don't matter what bees you have.
Yep!
100% vsh queen will have 100% hygienic drones! Anything more than 50% will affect brood production they aren't going to let to many infected live
I've been beekeeping for about 4 years now, and so far, I haven't had any problem with mites. Yes, I've sometimes seen a few on the bottom board, but their numbers have never gone up for me, so I've not needed to treat yet. But also, I do only foundationless frames, and my bees are much smaller, which gives the mites not enough room to gestate in the larvae.
Those silly cats they always steal the show!😊another great video!🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝
When my first hive successfully overwintered I thought why did people say it was difficult to keep bees and that spring the bees really took off in numbers and I added more boxes. I was reluctant to go into the hive and was only treating with oxalic acid and essential oils. I started noticing more and more bees walking on the ground with k wing and did not aggressively treat with anything and then in the fall one day I went to look in the hive and they were all gone. No dead bees. They just left.
Thank you once again for the great Education. :)
Excellent content!!! Spot on.🐝safe and keep your smoker lit!
Konrad
Good video thanks
You’re spot on about needing 3 waves of treatment. The late season mite drift is the surprising one. If my bees are robbing an untreated colony they are going to bring home a problem. I would swear one of my thriving colonies invited another colony to join them. The population got huge and even with a great queen it didn’t make sense. The mite load also got big until the OAV series knocked them down to nothing.
It works in the opposite too. I had invaders hit my hive and leave mites. I'd never had them until then. My very strong colony got hit extremely hard by mites. I hope they make it through the winter.
Thank You for this video Kamon! I have tried some different mite treatments and am not having much luck with them. This last Summer Hop Guard III summer before Api-Guard. Both Octobers I have had terrible absconding. Some of my biggest heaviest hive have left me. I have since done an Oxalic Acid treatment and will do two more before honey flow in the late Spring. I catch 100% wild bees and do not think they must be that great at grooming. Do you like Apivar? It is easily applied which makes it nice. Do you mix it with O.A.? Thanks, Steve from Mountain Home Idaho
Thank you I just had a hive abscond.
Thanks for the info
Thank you! This is our first year and we worked up to 20 hives, 9 from wild swarms. We are trying treatment free by grafting Minnesota hygienic and assuming wild drones in our DCA(no other bee keepers in the area). We've lost 4 hives in the last month that left honey and pollen only to have wax moth add insult to injury.
Prepare to lose alot more.. Honestly all my bees Hygienic,mixed with truly Feral,NO bees can handle VARROA,they all lie or dump mite soff in Nucs they sell .That's my belief
We quickly learning. Looks like we order a fogger this week.
Thanks for this video friend! I have been keeping for a few years and still so much to learn! I am out by Memphis.
Great video!
yes kamon i have had small swarms leave in the fall as well in California
Love it! Tell us the truth! I'm tired of people sugar coating everything to keep someone from being offended. About to be winter,not sure how much content you saved up. 15min seminar type videos like this sounds good to me.
Thanks Garrett Bee co. We will have plenty of cool stuff this winter. Cold inspections , builds, info, and shenanigans (if Laurel will let me get away with it)
Beautiful, thanks.
Great video
this was great thanks
Funny you should post this today. I just came from my beeyard. Lost a hive. There are 60 bees sitting on nearly empty combs with the queen.
Excellent!
Thank you. Everyone is afraid to talk about viruses and use of antibiotic. Always told take your bees to the vet. My vet laughed. Agriculture means using your brain and to act fast. In Montana. Two apivar treatments and OA. Even during winter on a close to 50 f day.
When they made it where u need a prescription for terramyacin I talked to my vet about having him give me a prescription for my bees. He actually got quite angry at me... there is not a chance in hell that he will ever look at bees.
I confronted my state bee inspector and he actually wanted to go after the vet. Asked for his name. I gave him the name and.added that "you have no authority to force a vet to inspect insects". That's when it hit him... oh.
Just here to appreciate the boot camouflage
Great videos, very interesting. Please keep at it.
Thanks
Wisdom pure wisdom..
Thanks a a bunch:)
You guys can talk mites all you want but these two cute intruders are jus so sutle n sweet ..sort of like knowing they're not suppose to ruin the video🐺🐱
Thanks !!
This ia timely. I had 3 hives (out of three that I manage) abscond on me. I was late in getting to treat for mites as this is my first year, I was hesitant to do the treatments. I'll be all over them next year!
OMG thought it was a raccoon coming for you at first!!🙀🙀anyway shout out to Minnesota where I’m at and I’ve got the VSH bees I still do mite checks all the time I’m paranoid ! 300 bees in alcohol wash is nothing in the grand scheme of things right? Good vid 🐝🐝🐝
Hi Kamon. I'm in Canada. I always enjoy your content. Your casual and relaxed and you're open minded, which makes you far different than the dogmatic 'true believers'. I really appreciate it, but I don't have a cat. I've never wanted to be owned.
Excellent video just like all of your videos. Keep it up. Also love the court jesters in the background.
Thanx bro always helpful!
For real..... I was like where are his feet!!! Love the videos! I’ve been binge watching y’alls channel.
thanks for the vids ...I live in Alberta Canada, last year was my 1st year I wintered 2 hives lost 3 ,,,got 6 now going into winter did my treatments ….cheers
Great video and information!✅👍👍
I did a mite wash on 1 of my three colonies Thursday and had an 11 mite count. Treating with OA over the next 3 weeks.
Treated yesterday and only saw like 1-2 dead mites I thought I'd see a lot more dead....
Hi kamon , little question(s) ! Just to remind you I work with Dadant bee hives so a 10 frame deep and several 8-frame medium supers for the honey with a queen excluder above the deep. My question is do you know if it's the same bees who will go from the flowers threw the deep, the queen excluder and up the super, or do they split the job ? And do you think it would be useful to make a hole on the side of the super like a short cut , would it help bees to work faster ?? Thanks for your help and advices 👍👍
Peter (France)
Hey Peter during peak season forager bees often offload their nectar to another bee in the hive but I don't know to what extent or what percentage this takes place. I really like the idea of having an upper entrance or some entrance above the excluder that allows bees to go in and also allows the moisture from the curing nectar to vent outside the hive
@@kamonreynolds thank you!! Thought about the fact that bees would go faster to fill up the super but didn't think about it would help the nectar to lose humidity easyer and less work for the bees . In spring we have quite a bite of what I think you call rape ( yellow flowers source of vegetable oil) and it's hard to get the percentage of humidity low enough to avoid honey from ferment . 😉
Thank you for your answers 👍
bees are organized according to the strength of the community and nectar intake and this changes according to the situation in the hive .... opening an additional opening can be counterproductive because it engages part of the bees to defend that part ... moisture is not released by the hive but by bee engagement .... one entrance is the best solution in my experience in any context .... greetings from Croatia
Great info. I'm binging your channel right now. I'm a varroa convert. I'm getting way more aggressive with treatments. Took a few lost colonies to finally wake up.
Thanks. I was that way also. Many of us take a couple seasons. If you can get the 3 keys working for you, you will have too many bees one day
Thanks man love you guys
Kamon Reynolds - Tennessee’s Bees, I hope you are able to comment in detail on the idea of using CO2 instead of Alcohol for mite counts.
thumbs up for strong vocabulary
Bro's boots vanish into the soil is fairly freaky once you notice it. 😮
Good advice.....
Good video. My question is how a full 8 frame hive of bees with a super full of honey completely disappears in 2 weeks. I mean cleaned out empty. Nothing but bare empty combs. No dead bees, no dead larvae, no honey, no bee bread etc? Not mouse or moths, or beetles. Like they just vanished overnight?
I had 3 hives do that each 1 week from each other. The strongest hive left first, then the medium then the weekest hive. It was a bad year for yellow jackets as well. Very bad. Everything cleaned out only one beetle dead on bottom board. Im in ontario.
Newbie here and I thought my mite resistant bees would be good till I saw this post. I'm thinking I may need to do it. Is it too late?
Its my 1st year and I've had to ignore the bees the past 2 months due to husband health issues triple bypass. So now I'm trying to play catch up on everything and I don't know what to do. I'm getting overwhelmed with questions and options online. I tend to really appreciate your approach.
Any advice for getting ready for winter in texas will be appreciated.
I'm going to try to order neccessary items today and tomorrow to put in Wednesday while its warm
Thx
do an alcohol wash and check your mite load. then oa vapor treat if necessary.
A lady friend of ours lost 5 hives out of 5 in the fall when the bees left with all they had, except the kitchen sink (honey ) which they left behind.
Bummer
I had small 4 frame nuc adscond last week .. nuc was boosted couple times with brood from production colony maybe it picked up higher mite load . Guess I'll never know . Mite treatment seems to trigger most of the time when I've had it happen
If I was raising sheep in an area that had a high wolf count I would not expect the sheep to protect themselves. The bee experts say the honeybees don't have the genetics to live with mites. We have to help them. The semi-resistant bees can lower the mite counts so you need one less treatment per year maybe but if you don't treat you are going to be in trouble. Good job Kamon.
mistakes in treating varroa and poor nutrition (starvation) result in swarming in the fall .... great video .... all the wisdom is to just see the mistakes and admit them to yourself and that is a problem for most beekeepers .... it is always someone else's fault .... eternal problem ..... the sooner you understand this the more successful you will be in beekeeping
Thank you for this video. It explained a lot. Both of my hives absconded and then resources robed out by yellow jackets. My question is. Can I use the these frames and just install a new package of bees?
Yes and your bees will grow faster with those frames too. Good clean frames give me 10 years before we cycle them out. Some would rather melt them down earlier but i don't see any reason to health wise
If you have a high mite count in November, is it too late to stop the problem? What to do?
Kamon thanks again! Should you treat each swarm you catch when an if you catch them?
Hi jason, I would treat each swarm after they have laid brood. typically 7 days after install is a great time for a gram of OAV. Don't use apiguard or formic it will run them out when they are that young. Apivar also works great.
Lost 1 hive out of 5, first year. What should I do with the brood comb that has bee bread, and a deep that is almost entirely honey? Should it be thrown out? Frozen? Moved to another colony?
I believe that breeding towards a mite/virus resistant bee is very important and is a big part of what i'm currently working towards in my own apiary. However, I don't think treatment free is a good idea, using VHS, allogrooming and minnesota hygienic traits as part of an IPM system to help reduce the level of mite infestation between treatments should in theory prove to be the best way to keep mite levels as low as possible.
Michael Hardman treatment free is a terrible idea if your bees are used to treatment, they are like the human body if you are used to anti biotics your whole life then you stop taking your body will be unable to handle the diseases and things that come upon you and will likely kill you. Treatment free is very successful tho like our apiary because our bees have not been treated and come from feral stock from in the 50-60s so they don’t require help with varroa or diseases. To turn to treatment free you really need strong stock that has been treatment free before you received
Agreed, while i do selection among my own stock to improve where i can, i have sourced my genetics from various genetic lines, Beeweaver, VP Queens, Mite maulers to name a few. This year i didn't wash above a 2% infestation on any of my colonies with the above mentioned genetic crosses. I do a lot of cut outs and about half of them washed over the economic threshold at the time of removal, the other half washed low but the correlation between low mite counts and temperament when dealing with feral bees was not good to say the least. When i find a colony that washes above my personal threshold of 3% i treat and re-queen.
I agree, resistance is one part of IPM. I plan on introducing hygienic and chewer traits to my stock to keep the numbers as low as possible. Once IPM principles have been followed, in my opinion, then it becomes a numbers game. If resistant bees rob out mite bombs, which they do, they are going to need a boost from the OA. It's either that or lose the genetics that were doing a great job until overwhelmed.
@@BlessedBeJESUSCHRIST Hello Justin! Do you use essential oils?
u are always intresting to lissen to.
I have lost bees the past 2 years, one hive died of some form of poison, but mostly they're swarming and leaving then wax moths take over. I just witnessed my bees swarm the other day (August) I'm trying to figure out why they're leaving. I don't want to use chemicals on my hives, I really really don't. I'm just about to the point of giving up. I don't know what to do.
You should look into fungi use. There have been research studies showing wood rotting mushrooms helping bees with viruses as well as there being fungi that destroy mites.
My second year that my bees absconded. Could it be the location? I didn’t even take honey this year. There was still a lot of honey on the frames. I did have ants though do ants cause chaos?
I have a question
I've got a hive that i extracted honey from an after putting the frames back in. I checked the hive about 2 months later an the frames haven't been touched
What can cause that ?
How often do you do an alcohol wash per year? What months are important to do this?
Mid June and Late August here in TN.
Another wash after the June treatment never hurts
So I just put apivar strips in last week. Will remove early December. Best to get in, remove, close up? No mite check at that time, right? Too cold?
I caught a swarm about a month ago and it ended up leaving. The rest of my bees are fine. What would you think happen? I open feed pollen and syrup. I live next to broccoli fields.
I can't say for sure. Perhaps overheating (I had one abscond like that due to a decent population with too reduced of an entrance) Did it have a good queen? Perhaps the swarm had alot of mites and not enough nutrition? I have found open feeding for me does not always take care of the little colonies as good as it needs too.
No brood to "hold" them possibly
Did you cage the queen? The cutout guys like 628Dirtrooster always try to cage the queen for a day or two. It's not clear from your channel where you live. If you live in area with Africanized bees, they can be really squirrely about being messed with. In Africa, it's a big problem. If you take out some honey or just inspect they'll abscond.
John Turner I didn’t cage the queen. Maybe I’ll do that next time
Baddest Bees they had brood and stores
I have actually started a game watching your videos. It is called-how long before the kitties show up and what direction will they come. Lol. By the way, it looks like you are kneeing on the bee stand.
So do the cat's not get stung or is it too late in the year?