Urban beekeeping in New Mexico's largest city.

Dead bees since mid October

Beeks what's happeneing?

This is my first hive, which my grandson and I set up in May. Since early October I have started noticing dead bees around my Lang hive. At first I thought it was because the temps had dropped into the low 40s and that my active bees were caught unprepared. I recorded the scene in photos and movies and I asked the guest speaker about this at the last Beeks meeting but he did not really have an answerer for me, he mentioned something about drones and robbing or mites.

When I opened the hive to prepare the bees for winter they seemed active and healthy, with most of the brood cells empty and being filled with honey. Two hive boxes, about 19 frames in all were covered with working bees and there seemed to be lots of honey for the winter. I left two boxes and reduced the opening. In the following days however more dead bees continued to accumulate around the hive opening. In one of the movies there are bees that seem to be staggering about, on a warn morning, too week to fly. I estimated about 150 to 200 hundred dead bees. And while I estimate about 30 to 40,000 bees in the hive, I ‘m wondering if I should be concerned. I understood that robbing would cause death if so much honey was taken that bees in the robbed hive began to starve. But my bees have honey and they have numbers. Should I worry or just let them go though the winter and see what happens in spring.

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Permalink Reply by Ron Brooks on November 10, 2012 at 6:11pm

Hi ,im not sure whats going on here since the majority of your hive is fine

my guess would be natural die off since as you know honey bees have very

short lives,it would be interesting to know the age of the dead bees and if they were all from the same brood.

Im curious about the yellow balls on the ground ,is that pollen? watch out for yellow jackets, they come early

and have been seen taking brood and weak honeybees!

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Permalink Reply by Louis Sanchez on November 12, 2012 at 9:19am

Ron thanks for your reply. Yes that is pollen on the ground. I had bought some pollen that tasted like steer manure and I did not like it, so I put piles at the opening of the hive and the bees took most of it into the hive and some the scattered on the ground. I have yellow banded bees, like the ones in the picture, and black bees. The yellow banded bees I think are from the original nuc and brood that I bought at the end of May (150+ days ago). The newer bees are totally black, which I assume are Caucasian bees, though Ken Hays said we were getting Russian bees. Unless there are robber bees freely coming and going, I think these are all my bees. The mix of dead bees is pretty even between yellow and black banded bees. I keep a close watch on the hive and I have seen no yellow jackets. A few tiny black ants, a fly or two and a spider web next to the hive, which I removed. The staggering bees made me think that someone in the neighborhood is spraying pesticides but I have no other evidence.