When all of the bees—including the queen—leave the hive in search of a new home we say they are “absconding.” This is very different from swarming. Swarming is a reproductive process in which one colony splits and becomes two. From 40 to 70% of the original colony leaves with the old queen to start a new colony elsewhere. The remaining bees are left with a soon-to-emerge virgin queen who will head what’s left of the original colony. If a colony is robust, it may swarm more than one time in a season.
Absconding is not a reproductive process because all the bees leave—the entire colony just moves somewhere else. While absconding does not occur very frequently in European honey bees, it happens enough to be annoying.
The primary reasons for absconding are overheating, lack of food, and frequent disturbance. However, it can also be caused by bad odors, parasites in the hive, or disease. It seems that newly installed packages have a greater tendency to abscond than well-established colonies.
I have had two colonies abscond. The first time was after I installed a package of bees in a brand new top bar hive. I had wired some comb onto a few of the bars to give them a start and fed them with sugar syrup. About three days after the queen was released, I found the entire colony in a nearby bush. I re-hived the swarm and re-caged the queen. Instead of letting the bees release her, I kept her caged until comb building was well underway. By the end of the summer it turned into a huge colony—so it all worked out in the end.
The second time was about two weeks after I split an overly-populous hive. Everything seemed fine, the new queen was laying and the workers were storing pollen and nectar. But we were in the beginning of a long, hot, rainless period with very little forage available. Of course I didn’t know it was coming when I made the split. One day I went out to find the entire colony hanging from the supports underneath the hive stand.
As before, I knocked the swarm into a box, returned it to the hive, caged the queen, and fed sugar syrup like crazy. It turned into a good colony as well. Once again, everything worked out.
I was lucky to find both these absconding swarms and get a second chance at tending them. In the first case, I think the new top bar just didn’t feel “homey” until more comb was built. In the second case, I think it was the extreme heat and lack of forage that drove them away. If you have a colony abscond try to figure out why it happened, but don’t get discouraged—it’s just another part of a strange hobby.
Rusty
I live in West Bengal India. I have this huge bee hive (wild and natural) by my window. Every year when summer starts they just abscond everyone and then they come back after summer ends. Now this is happening since a few years now. The hive gets too much sun during summer and that’s why they leave.
But my question is I know the time when they will leave. Can I take the honey just before they leave? Last year for the first time I took very little honey, and 2 days later they left the hive completely empty.
Will they come back if I take most of the honey?
Thanks,
Sri
Sri,
I have never heard of bees absconding from a hive in spring and returning in the fall, so I can’t answer your question. Are you sure they are the same bees? Maybe the bees are leaving in the spring due to heat and others are moving in later in the year?
In any case, if they leave every year at the same time, and you know when they are going to leave, I suppose you could take the honey. The bees can only carry so much with them when they go. Whatever is left will be stolen by some creature, so it may as well be you.
It would be interesting to see if you could track these bees and see where they go and if they actually do come back. What kind of honey bees are these? Has anyone else in your area reporting this behavior? Interesting stuff.
Rusty,
Put a new hive in this spring, my first experience. Harvested 3.75 gallons of honey just from the top box. Noticed the lid had a gap last week and pushed it down on a cold morning. We had a huge wind storm last week here in Utah and today I went to check on the hive and all the bees are gone. Still lots of honey and maybe 100 dead bees but, no movement. Any idea what happened?
Kevin,
I don’t know. Was the lid open during the windstorm? Could they have blown away?
Sounds like you had really good honey production. Too bad you lost them!
I live in central Portugal and this is my first year of beekeeping. I had a great harvest of honey in summer and the bees were still actively foraging – even the last few days although it has got down to freezing at night. There are still eukalypt and rosemary flowers about. Yesterday I noticed that there was a lot of activity in the hive which is unusual. So for the first time this winter I opened it up and looked in. They were eating a lot of the wax and depositing it outside the hive and there was no brood and I couldn’t see the queen. This morning I looked at the hive and they had all gone! There is still plenty of honey and pollen stores in the hive and no sign of disease.
Richard,
I don’t know what would cause the bees to abscond and leave honey behind, but several people have written about similar experiences this year. Do any readers out there have any idea what’s going on here? I’m eager to hear your theories.
Does the bee hive have honey left after the bees abandon after 3-4 months?
I first noticed something was up when I saw a lot of bees outside the hive and that they were eating the wax. I can only assume these were robber bees or rather bees just scavenging wax after my bees had already left. I therefore took the hives in so that at least I could use the honey and wax that was still there. I’m sure my bees would not come back now. This all happened last week. By the way I only had the one hive.
Richard,
I’m sure you are right, they were robbers cleaning up after your bees were already gone. They probably were not eating the wax so much as tearing it apart to get every last molecule of honey. Taking in the hive was the best thing to do because robber bees could easily clean out the whole thing in no time. It’s still a mystery why your bees absconded in the first place.
It has happened to me two times and I did not find the bees. Both of the bee hives were found wild. I kept checking on them, I think too much! But the next time I left water 20 feet away and feed them a lot and they are doing good. So who knows why!!!!!
Hi there. I had a similar experience happen to me. On Sunday I went to check my hive which I had not checked on in a while (1 month) and there was no activity. I opened it and there were 2 full boxes of honey, loads of pollen and NOT ONE SINGLE BEE. No brood, nothing. Not even the inkling of dead or unhatched brood…
I checked for varroa of course on the board I have for such a purpose and nothing. Just loads of pollen and wax…I looked under the hive and found a small baseball size of a cluster of dead bees inside one of the cinder blocks I used as a hive stand. Could they have tried to abscond or swarm because of the warm weather and when it got suddenly cold they died? We had a whacky winter in NJ so I don’t know what happened here.
I am hoping part of the hive swarmed to a new home as there are many honey bees in the vicinity, just not in the hive! A funny thing was also that although honeybees were in the yard foraging, they were not robbing the honey in the hive…just strange. There was no sign of disease or varroa although we have many hornets in the area. Perhaps the hornets attacked them? Just so sad to have lost a hive…
Anyone interested in signing this petition? After watching “Queen of the Sun” I got buzzed up about this!
http://www.change.org/petitions/to-the-offices-of-the-almond-board-of-california-implement-a-system-that-eliminates-the-practice-of-migratory-beekeeping
Interesting article here in the UK’s Guardian newspaper which reckons a specific type of pesticide may be to blame for absconding bees/CCD
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/damian-carrington-blog/2012/apr/11/bees-pesticides-decline-colony-collapse