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It was a winter of starving bees. In that year, I heard countless tales of beekeepers losing all, or nearly all, their colonies to starvation. Many of the lifeless hives contained not a single drop of honey. Others had multiple frames of honey remaining, but the bees died anyway.
Why bees die with honey in the hive
During cold weather, honey bees cannot leave their cluster in search of food. Once they leave the warmth provided by the group of bee bodies, individuals become stiff and sluggish. If they become immobile–unable to go forward or move back–they simply die in place.
The danger of leaving the cluster means that honey bees may never eat honey that is stored just beyond the edges of the cluster. Instead, they eat what is directly above them. This happens because warm air rises. Outside of the cluster, the warmest place in the hive is the area directly above the knot of bees, so that’s where they go.
As the bees move upward into the warm area, they consume any food they encounter. The resulting pattern resembles a vertical tunnel through the stored food.
The bees’ movement within the hive
Warm periods during the winter allow the bees to move around inside the hive and find more of the stored food. Sometimes the cluster may move toward one side of the box and eat the honey there. But if it becomes cold again, they are even further from the honey remaining on the other side of the box. In that case, you may find the dead cluster on one side or in one corner of the brood box.
A similar type of movement occurs in top-bar hives. Although the cluster cannot move up, it may gradually move left or right. But if the bees eat their way to one end of the hive, they can’t turn around and traverse the empty combs to get to the other end. So they run out of food.
A cluster of honey bees won’t leave brood unattended, so even though there is very little brood in the winter months, it anchors the cluster to one spot. It seems like the bees would move freely inside their box, but instead, they always remain attached to the nursery. During broodless times, if any, the cluster will move further.
Take advantage of the warm areas
Placing feed—especially hard candy—just above the cluster is very effective because that is where the bees are most likely to find it. Because heat from the cluster keeps that area warmer than the surroundings, the bees can move onto the candy without freezing.
A lack of honey may be caused by over-harvesting, but it can also result from paltry nectar flows or particularly long winters. Whatever the cause, feeding sugar can be a long, time-consuming, and expensive ordeal, but it may be the only way to keep your bees alive.
The photo above shows what starved bees often look like. The bees—still in the shape of a cluster—all died head-down in a cell with their little butts sticking up in the air.
Bees that die head-down can be confusing
However, adult bees with their heads down and butts up is a typical wintertime configuration even for healthy bees, so it is not a sure sign of starvation. According to Thomas Seeley, “Worker bees deep in cells, with heads down, are a normal part of a winter cluster. This is what the bees do to keep the insulating mantle of the cluster continuous, even where a comb slices through it. When a colony starves, we find lots of bees deep in cells, but they are not a sign of starvation.”
Loosely translated, that means that even healthy bees spend time with their heads in the brood combs. But a healthy bee in that position is helping to keep the brood warm. Conversely, if a group of bees dies in that position, they probably starved. They did what they could to keep the nest warm, but died when they ran out of fuel.
To determine the ultimate cause of death, a beekeeper needs to evaluate the size of the remaining colony, the location of any remaining food stores, and the temperatures in the preceding weeks.
How to remove dead bees stuck head-down in the combs
If you need to remove bees that died head-down in their cells, here are some suggestions from my readers:
- If the bees are dry and crispy, you can turn the frames upside down and wrap them against a firm surface, such as a workbench. Rap repeatedly, but gently, so you don’t break the comb. Most will come out far enough to brush away.
- Lay strips of duct tape against the protruding abdomens and pull gently.
- If the bees are damp and moldy, they are harder to remove. You may have to use forceps to extract them one by one.
- Let the new colony of bees remove them. Dead bees and mold are things honey bees evolved with. If you give a strong colony the frames, nasty as they are, the bees will clean them up in no time.
Thanks to Jared Watkins for the great photo of bees head-down in a frame of honeycomb.
Rusty
Honey Bee Suite
Bees go head first into cells like that in all winter clusters. It’s why you don’t move a full frame of honey into the center of a cluster in the middle of winter, but next to the cluster. They fill these cells in cluster for the sake of condensing it and being able to create more warmth. This year I had several weak hives which died in clusters with their heads down into cells in this fashion with honey filled cells immediately adjacent on both sides of the cluster. Literally, if these bees moved over one cell they were on capped honey. They didn’t starve. The clusters were just too small or weak to handle the extreme cold we had here in Michigan this winter. I agree that bees can and often do starve under the conditions you mentioned, i.e. because they can’t break out of cluster to move to the honey. I’ve heard it too many times however, that if you see bees head first in the cells like that it means they starved. It just isn’t necessarily so.
Hi Jim,
I’m not sure I follow. You say the bees move honey closer to the cluster to keep the cluster compact? Is that right? The reason their heads are in the cells is because they are moving honey? Then they died of cold (small cluster) not starvation? Okay, I can see that, especially if there is honey near by. But in the photo and in other frames I’ve seen there was no honey anywhere.
But what I think you’re saying is that if the bees were head-first in the cells and there was honey directly adjacent to them, they most likely died of cold, not starvation. I can see that. The bees become immobilized from cold, so they can’t pull themselves out of the cell to go to the next one.
Here’s my question: Not all bees go into the cells. Bees within the cluster are fed by trophyllaxis by the perimeter bees that are collecting honey from cells. So if the honey-collecting bees die of the cold, won’t the cluster bees die of starvation if no one delivers food? Or does the cluster just become so small that all bees die of the cold?
Here’s another question: Have you ever pulled a “starved” bee out of a cell and found honey down there? Assuming your theory is correct, the bees died of the cold while moving honey around, so some of those cells should have honey in them.
I’ve never heard this argument before and it intrigues me. The next time I see “staved” bees right next to the honey cells, I’m going to pull them out and see what’s under there.
Hi Rusty, No I’m not saying the bees move honey closer. I’m saying the reason the bees are head first into the cells is because that is HOW they cluster. Empty comb is an integral part of a cluster. Indeed, without empty comb, there is no way the bees could create the warmth needed to endure severe cold. To say those bees were desperately trying lick the last drop of honey from the bottom of those cells is almost certainly incorrect. Rather, they were in those cells as a function of creating warmth. I suppose ‘technically’ they may have died of starvation, especially in the case of it being a large cluster. However, in smaller clusters, I believe the coroners report would find the cause of death to be hypothermia. In either case we have to determine which happened first. In the case of a large cluster more time would elapse between the inability to move the cluster due to cold and the death of the bees on the inside because of the larger insulating layer causing starvation. In a smaller cluster the cold can kill the bees long before they starve.
Regarding finding honey in the bottom of the cell of a “starved” bee. I think that question comes from a misinterpretation due to my poor phrasing. When I said in my original comment that the bees ‘fill the cells in order to condense the cluster’, I meant they fill the empty cells with themselves in order to condense the cluster.
In either case it is just semantics to me. Falling off a boat and inhaling water into your lungs causes a lack of oxygen to the brain causing death. Nobody says “he died because of lack of oxygen to his brain”. We say the cause of death was drowning. It’s an important distinction because lack of oxygen can occur in many ways e.g. drowning, strangulation, suffocation, hanging etc. Starvation also has different causes. So, while starvation may have occurred, the much more important issue is why? Did the beekeeper take too much honey, was there just not enough resources available to make honey, or was it too cold to break out of cluster and reach the honey? It is important because knowing the cause gives us the best chance to provide for a solution.
I guess it just boils down to the ‘starvation’ issue as a pet peeve of mine. I mean, really, how many times have you heard it said, “When you see bees head first into cells it means they starved”? One, it isn’t necessarily so and, B, it is completely useless as a diagnosis.
On a side note I love your blog Rusty and thanks for the great work you do here.
Jim
Thanks. Your point is well-taken and the analogy to drowning helped me to understand.
By the way, Jim, do you listen to Car Talk?
I do listen to Car Talk occasionally. Why I don’t make it a point to tune in more often, I don’t know. Click and Clack have wonderful personalities and are very funny. I bet there is a podcast for them. Now you’ve gone and piqued my interest.
Jim,
It’s just that in your previous comment you mention part 1 and part B, which is so very Click and Clack. And, yes, they do have a podcast.
So in your experiance do bees die off one by one, or do you go out one day and see a heap of dead bees at the bottom? I opened up an abandoned and inactive hive once and a bunch of decomposing bees were in a pile on the bottom.It was an awful thing to see, with all their combs that I imagine to have once been heavy and fragrent with honey to then be stripped of their beauty.
In a normal healthy hive, bees die one by one. But in the winter when it’s too cold to fly, the dead bodies collect on the bottom board. That is why the opening on your entrance reducer should be on the top side instead of on the bottom. You don’t want the entrance to become clogged with dead bees. Sometimes in winter I push a small stick through there and sweep in back and forth to clear an opening for them.
Husband & I are appalled by our severe losses after our winter started with 42 colonies & had only 7 survive until spring. We had 3 colonies, loved keeping them so much we decided to start a business last spring. Anyhow, we can’t seem to figure out what went wrong.
We left every colony at 100# to be extra sure they had enough of their own food. We strategically placed their capped honey throughout & left full supers or deeps above them. There were no signs of excess moisture, parasite, or other problems. We did have a couple hives that had capped honey but much of the wax had been eaten away. We understand that could be mites but we haven’t found excessive signs of mites on bees or any other of the usual symptoms.
Most of the colonies were very strong going into winter – interesting, a couple of the weakest that we were sure would die are doing great right now. Some hives had some (like a handful) bees head down in the cell with capped honey literally all around them. Most of the hives just had small-ish clusters (5-15) of bees in random areas throughout the hive or a couple larger clusters around or at the bottom. It was a bizarre winter with crazy high temps immediately followed by drastic freezing. Could that be the bulk of the problem or are we missing something completely? We feel terribly about our poor bees! 🙁
Cathy,
Of course it is impossible to say from here, but whenever I hear of hives with just a few bees and lots of honey, I think of Varroa mites. Usually, the hives were not treated for mites, or the treatment occurred too late in the fall, meaning the winter bees were infected with mite-borne diseases before the mites were killed and ended up dying of the diseases instead of the mites.
It’s not a sure thing, like I say. Perhaps you did all your mite management correctly and something else went wrong. The questions I would ask are 1) how and when did you treat for mites? and 2) have you looked for guanine deposits in the cells? Guanine is a sure sign of mites, but even with no guanine deposits, the bees could have died of mite diseases if, as I said, the treatments came too late.
For more on diagnosing mite infestation, see Did mites kill by bees?
Since today was so warm, I had the chance to open up my top bar to check it. I’d had a suspicion that I’d lost the whole hive, but hope springs eternal. Unfortunately, I was right; not a single live bee in the entire hive. Hundreds of dead on the bottom, and while checking the comb, I found three distinct smaller clusters throughout the comb. There wasn’t a single drop of honey in the entire hive, and all throughout the combs, I found places where bees had climbed into their cells head first, some in the clusters, and some just in isolated groups by themselves with just a few dead bees hanging on to the comb outside of the occupied cells.
This was my first year with my first hive, so I didn’t harvest anything at all. I left them all of their bars for themselves. That was 8 full good bars that were drawn out nicely, with perfect bee space, and no attachment to the sides of the bar, and another six combs that had been drawn out all cattywompus across about eight bars, diagonal.
First question is this: any ideas why they would have been drawing out classic, almost textbook perfect top-bar comb for those first eight bars, and then, suddenly, start drawing comb just any which way for the next six combs?
Second question: I’m going to be getting more bees this spring to try again (if there is any available! if *everyone* had such an awful winter, it could be hard to find them!) Should I take out all the drawn-out comb before placing the new bees? Or leave them the good, straight comb as a head start? I already removed all the cattywompus comb – most of which hadn’t even been used, yet! The rest of the comb has a lot of bees still head first in the cells, but I can pull those bees out if it would help the new bees by giving them a head start.
I really wish I’d listened to my instincts and made a hard candy bar for them, but everyone around here said that they would be fine if I just left them everything that first year. One year wiser, now, I hope, but still with so much to learn.
Rayvn,
You’ve described a classic case of a starved hive, but you already know that. Just because you left them everything doesn’t mean it was enough. Depending on where you live, a colony needs between 60 and 90 pounds of honey to get through a winter. If there are a lot of warm days in mid-winter, they require even more food because they become active. Bees head down in a cell indicate they were scraping the bottom of the barrel, so to speak, cleaning up every particle they could find.
There are a number of reasons the bees may have gone off course in their comb building, and you don’t say too much about your bars, so I can’t say for sure. But if you are using starter strips or a bead of wax, it helps if the bead goes all the way to the end of the bar. Another thing that helps is to alternate new un-touched bars with combs that are straight. That way, the new ones will also be straight.
Cutting out the burr comb was a good idea and you can melt it and use it for starter beads. If it were me, I would now alternate the straight combs with these bars that you cleaned up. Remove all the wax you can, especially where they went off track, so they don’t follow in the same direction again.
There is no need to remove the dead bees from the cells, your new bees will do all that much more quickly and efficiently than you can, and they will destroy less comb.
Since your new bees will not have to build as much comb as last year’s bees, they can get to the chore of collecting honey sooner. With any luck, they will collect enough for the winter. First year colonies in brand new hives frequently have trouble storing enough honey because comb building is both time consuming and energy expensive, which is why used comb is so valuable to beekeepers.
Hi, I found this blog by doing a starving honey bee search. About 2 weeks ago I noticed my hummingbird feeder was covered in honey bees, so I went out to have a look and the bees swarmed, crawling all over me (no stinging), and all I could think was that they were frantic to get at the sugar water and possibly starving. So I went in and made a shallow bowl of sugar water for them.
By the next day I had thousands of bees here and went thru over 10 lbs of sugar in about 3 days feeding them. My computer had crashed so I had no way of figuring out if I should even do this or how to measure it out for them. I ended up using over a half cup sugar to one cup water and added a little of the hummingbird nectar to it.
I have never seen this before. I live in Northern/Central Minnesota and this year I noticed we had very few wildflowers blooming again (perennial) in the fall unlike other years. I watched carefully to make sure I wasn’t killing them accidentally and fed them until the temperature went back into the 50s. After that I did not see them again.
I just have one other question. The bees seemed to know me vs the other people here. When I would go out they would swarm all over me if they were out of their sugar water but ignore everyone else. Do they know who is feeding them by smell or some other way? The hummingbirds come to my window and do acrobats when their feeder runs out, so it was interesting when the bees acted in a similar way. I thought this was incredibly interesting!
Now my husband thinks I have a gift because I was never stung and wants me to keep bees 🙂 haha. I grew up rescuing wildlife so I don’t fear any animals which might have something to do with that. Staying calm I guess. Anyway I just wanted to make sure feeding them was OK and would like to know if anyone else saw anything like this. Thanks!!
Jean,
I can’t give you any concrete answers, just some generalities. Certainly one’s demeanor around bees has a large effect. Beekeepers who are calm, move slowly, and do not exhibit fear can tend bees without protective gear. People who panic, flail their arms, and make quick defensive movements are more likely to get stung. It also depends to some extent where you are and what you are trying to do. Honey bees that are out collecting food are much more docile that those defending the entrance to their hives.
When summers are hot and dry with few flowers, bees fall short of food and are much more likely to seek alternative sources such as hummingbird feeders. Feeding them syrup is fine as long as the bees have something to stand on so they don’t drown.
I read a study once that said bees can learn to recognize human faces. Who knows? Bees can also be attracted to the scent of personal products such as shampoo and deodorant, so it is hard to tell exactly what is attracting them to you. It could even be some of the feed that splashed onto your hands or clothing. When I was a kid the no-see-ums used to virtually attack my sister, and they just left me alone. I have no idea why.
My brother-in-law has bees and checked them about a week ago and they all were head first and he thought dead. He pulled them all out and cleaned up the boxes. Today he went down and checked them and the bees are in there and the ones he cleaned out on the ground are gone. Could they have been playing possum and came back to life? What happened to the ones he pulled out and left on the ground, not a trace of them ?
Joanna,
From here I have to guess, but it sounds like the bees in there now are probably robbing the hive of anything that’s left. Although it’s hard to image much is left if the first group starved, it’s possible because sometimes starving bees can’t move far enough to find the honey stores. I’m assuming it’s winter where you are, and not the middle of summer. On a warm day in winter, bees are very likely to rob a weak or dead hive. If he wants to save leftover honey and combs for a new colony, your brother-in-law needs to protect the hive from predators.
He can open the hive and determine whether the bees are living there, or if they are just taking advantage of the situation.
Bees on the ground are food for many animals including skunks, possums, birds, and rats. I wouldn’t expect them to be on the ground very long.
Do the dead burrowed bees have to be removed from the comb in order to reuse it? New bees can’t clean them out can they? Thanks!
Jan,
Don’t worry about the dead ones. Your new bees will clean them out in no time: hard for us, easy for them.
Gosh sounds like you guys are failing the bees. I mean before beekeepers interfered and put them in a hive they were perfectly ok finding their own place to live in a warm place and survived the winter with their own honey supply. I think people need to go back to the natural way. Of course they want their own honey, they made it for their own consumption so feeding this crappy anything else is a really bad idea. Unless an emergency when you would need to feed them a natural organic alternative!!! Do right by the bees guys, give them homes and correct food, stop exploiting them like this, otherwise one day you will look around and guess what??!! No bees!! Then we will have some serious problems.
Chels must not bee a beekeeper. “I mean before beekeepers interfered and put them in a hive they were perfectly ok finding their own place to live in a warm place and survived the winter with their own honey supply.” How do you know that for sure? Were you there? Was this pre-varroa or post-varroa? Oh yawn!
Debbie,
Yes. I agree. Even pre-varroa the overwintering percentage was something like 20% for feral colonies.
Hello I’ve recently had a tree trimmed and we were amazed at the size of a bees honey comb we seen. Now in this area food for bees is practically non existent. I’d say there must be about 25k bees. The combs look empty. I don’t have resources to get up to them but I would like to put out some sugar water for them any suggestions?
Deborah,
You say “food for bees in practically non-existent.” What area is that?