You just installed a package of bees in a brand new hive, but the bees don’t seem settled. You check on them the next day and they are the same. Then on the third day, everything is quiet. No sounds come from the hive, and no big-eyed faces peer through the entrance. When you remove […] Read more
Oftentimes, what we describe as absconding is actually collapse from varroa mites. Some of the confusion is due to the speed at which the collapse occurs and the size of the affected colony, which may be huge. In addition, the act of absconding is rarely seen and the colony is seldom found. But this week I […] Read more
In an unexpected turn of events, the Oklahoma open-air colony I wrote about last week absconded from its nest. Even more surprising, the parent colony, the one that had lived for many years in the hollow of an oak tree on the far side of the pasture, absconded at roughly the same time. Lorieann Bradley, […] Read more
This past fall, I received many reports and questions about absconding bees, perhaps fifty in all. Every year I get these and I must admit that I’ve always taken the beekeepers’ word for it when they said their bees absconded. But this year I realized the sheer number of reports was off-kilter somehow. Yes, honey […] Read more
I tend to think of absconding as a “new colony” thing. That’s because I usually hear of it when a beekeeper puts a package in a freshly painted hive made of newly milled lumber, and the bees decide it doesn’t feel like home. New packages often leave in the first week or two, especially if […] Read more
Beekeepers are frequently advised to put a queen excluder under the brood box to keep a new package from absconding. Since the queen can’t leave, the colony won’t leave either. This is good advice that works well as long as you remove the excluder once the bees have settled in. Since drones cannot leave through […] Read more
You are a brand new beekeeper. Three days ago you proudly installed your first package of bees according to directions that you read a dozen times. Today, covered in protective gear from head to toe, you open your hive to make sure the queen has been released from her cage. What you find is shocking. […] Read more