Response to Starving Bees from Steve Parise

Sorry I haven't got back to you all sooner; I have been on annual leave.

I am assuming that the colonies are normal otherwise, that is they have queens, a good population and are not under heavy disease or mite stress. It is certainly possible for bees to have eaten up much of their stores with the prolonged spell of wet weather. This is especially true of Italian colonies. If they are indeed pulling out worker brood (drone brood starts to get pulled around this time of year anyway), then immediate feeding is necessary.

Go with a 2:1 sugar to water, top feed (avoid entrance feeders as this will promote robbing), with the feeder well protected from the weather and other bees. Make sure all extra supers are off the hives. This may have to go on for quite awhile, as they will need 50-60 pounds ideally, to make it through the winter. Let me know if you have other questions.

Regards,
Steve

Stephen G. Parise
Agriculture Resource Management Specialist/apiculturist
Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets
116 State Street
Montpelier, VT 05620-2901

Phone: 802.828.2431
E-mail: steve.parise@state.vt.us

Dead Bees on the Entrance

Hi West River Beekeepers,

After talking to a beekeeper friend who told me that one of her hives was starving, I went home to check on mine, and sure enough, my newest hive was starving. A pile of dead bees was on the Entrance board, and when I went in, a very small number of live ones!!! I immediately started feeding my three newest hives corn syrup. The rest of my hives had little to no honey stores but were plentiful with bees.

On the starving hive, I noticed a bunch of larva-like worms among the dead bees. They were alive and I am not sure if this is the clean up from the cannibalization or what. I scraped them away and there was activity coming and going. The other two weak hives were OK, but no great critical mass of bees or food. We shall see. I don't think there will be any honey for harvest this year. Drat!

Please comment. Thanks, Happy Acres

Help! Query from a beginning West River Valley beekeeper

I received this query today in an e-mail message from a friend. Please respond: any helpful comments will be appreciated.

"...since everyone is talking about harvesting honey we went into the top super to see if there was any honey. A week or so ago there seemed to be a lot of bees in that super, but today although there were a lot of bees there is NO comb. I have been feeding and they are eating the sugar water very quickly. Would you assume that our hive is having trouble maintaining like what we hear of others? Our plan at this point is to feed and leave everything for the bees to have this winter. Tell me what you think?

A little discouraging. We didn't venture to the broods........."

Bees Starving!!

Just wanted to alert other beekeepers that I and another local beekeeper have had bees starving for lack of stores,.....yes, in the middle of summer!
A few weeks ago I noticed dead bees on the entrance of a nuc. When I checked them they had no honey in the frames and they were cannibalizing the brood. They were desperate! I immediately started feeding them sugar syrup, and things turned right around,...they're doing fine now. I checked my other hives & nucs and found some others that were out of stores, too.

Yesterday another local beekeeper called me saying they had a hive with many bees dying, and when I got over there it turned out they were starving, too.
It seems the ones most likely to be on the verge of starving are the hives I made up in the spring or later with frames of capped brood/honey/ pollen. The weather has been so rainy, and we're into the summer nectar dearth, so the bees with little stores have had to consume all they had just to survive, leaving them precariously low, or entirely out of stores.

So I just wanted to let other folks know, and you might want to check your hives and feed any that are light.
Hopefully the fall flows of goldenrod and bamboo (japanese knotweed) will be good.
Good luck!
Denny