Colony completely gone!

jimbeekeeper · Jul 25, 2009

Hi All

You read about this and do not appreciate it until you see it!

Today on inspection one of my hives was 100% zero bees. Last inspection was last weekend and queen seen laying well.

The hive was created from an AS on the 09/06/09. 14/06/09 QC still sealed.

On the 28/06/09 eggs where first seen but not the queen, on the 19/07/09 the queen was marked green.

And today, zero bees only brood left.

Now I could have squashed the queen on the 19/07/09 or the marking has caused them to ball her, but I would have expected to still see bees 7 days later.

Any thoughts?

victor meldrew · Jul 25, 2009

I had a friend with a garden apiary. One stand stood out from the rest by the fact that he could never keep a colony of bees on it, they always absconded at some point

. He couldn't figure it out!!, In the end he just left the stand redundant

.

John Wilkinson

jimbeekeeper · Jul 25, 2009

..........

jon · Jul 25, 2009

Hi Jim.

I had a colony abscond about a month ago.
It was a 7 frame nuc with plenty of bees and about 4 frames of brood.
I noticed next to no activity and on checking there was just the brood and less than a frame of bees.
I had been using it to draw wax for other nucs and I was removing a couple of frames per week and giving foundation.
Either the colony got sick of me taking its comb or else it overheated as it absconded on a really hot day.

Did you mark the queen 19/06 or 19/07.
Even if they balled her you would have expected to find all the bees plus emergency cells.

jimbeekeeper · Jul 25, 2009

Thanks Jon, yes it was a typo, corrected above.

I had zero bees.

I suspect they might have up stickes for new pastures due to poor forage in my area