Thanks Helen - and Paul - it's a nightmare scenario, but worth knowing
that it doesn't have to mean the end of the colony. Presumably if there
had been more widespread use of insecticide, there would have been
practically no foragers left, but it doesn't sound as though this was
the case here. And even if more bees had been lost, it would still have
been worth providing honey - and presumably also pollen if possible - to
get the rest through the absence of nectar coming in.
Gilliane
On 21/06/2020 16:39, Helen Nunn wrote:
Hi Gilliane
Halfway down my account I mention poisoning and we decided, looking at the dead bees which had their tongue out, that probably they had fallen foul of a carelessly spraying gardener - so that was the human impact part of the story.
I have just returned from the allotment and can report that today the hive seems much happier with lots of purposeful coming and going at the entrance, not nearly so despairing as yesterday.
Helen
On Sun, 21 Jun 2020 at 13:57, Gilliane Sills <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Dear Paul
You say that in this case the bees were knocked back by human
action - but what action was that? I didn't notice anything in
Helen's message, though maybe I missed it...
Gilliane
On 21/06/2020 13:07, Oxnatbees wrote:
This is one of the few occasions I would actually feed a colony.
I've become quite ruthless about natural selection. For example,
if a swarm arrives too late in the year to survive, I would let
it try but die. I don't want to propagate genes for swarming at
inappropriate times.
But in this case, the bees have been knocked back by human
action. It's appropriate to intervene and help them. It's also
one of the few times that intervention /could/ make a difference.
- Paul
On Sat, 20 Jun 2020 at 18:04, Helen Nunn <helenmaynunn@xxxxxxxxx
<mailto:helenmaynunn@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Hi everyone
A couple of days ago I noticed a large number of dead bees
underneath my middle (top bar) hive – the one populated on 16
May with a swarm we collected from Oxford’s South Parks (the
colony is now know as SP). The next day there were even more
dead bees and they were falling (being pushed) from the
entrance. I opened the hive to have a look.
Observations:
1.Deep drifts of dead bees on the mesh floor – far too many
for the bees to take out, but they were trying (see photo).
2.No damp.
3.6 ½ combs had been built, with capped and some uncapped
brood on the first five. There were peaceful bees working
all over these combs.
I collected some bees to examine at home and asked Paul for
his ideas of what might be the cause? He thought maybe
*starvation* and recommended moving a comb of stores from my
healthy colony. I wondered about giving them a bottle of
syrup which I had handy, but this would stimulate laying
which wouldn’t be helpful if the colony is struggling.
Another theory is *poisoning*, because one of my photos shows
a bee with its tongue out. But why would this only affect one
of my hives? Well, if only these bees were visiting a garden
where the owner had sprayed pesticide, and the others were
foraging elsewhere, it could just affect the one colony. (My
hives are on our allotment where lots of different gardens
back on to the site.)
So what should I do?
1.Firstly I removed as many of the dead bees as I could, both
from the floor of the hive and the slabs underneath. Note –
it is useful to have slabs, rather than grass, under the
hives so that you can see what is happening.
2.Next I took a comb of honey from my other top bar hive and
placed it in bar one position in SP. Note: this is where it’s
so good to have two identical hives with interchangeable parts.
3.I closed up both hives and hope this will have solved the
problem. As Paul said, ‘By giving them the honey from another
hive they have uncontaminated food which will let them raise
the next generation without foraging. So they will recover,
it's just a knockback, most colonies have enough resilience /
spare capacity to handle this because they have evolved in a
challenging world with wasps and robbers and so on.’
Many thanks to Paul and Lynne for their trouble-shooting advice.
Helen
