Dead/tired/lost bees

[JustAddBees]

Bees were particularly busy this morning while I was gardening and I couldn't help notice the 5 or so dead bees on the grass in front of the hive. Then as the morning went on, I found more and more bees just wandering about on the ground in the garden (not flying). None of them had any real sense of direction and seemed unable to fly. This is a swarm I hived 3 weeks ago so are the original bees all coming to the end of their lives? Or is something else going on? A landscape feature changed nearby causing them to become disoriented?

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[pargyle]

Possibly not a lot to worry about yet ... swarms reduce in size after you hive them as there is no new emerging brood until after the queen has laid and the new bees have had time to develop. There will be natural losses and these are usually foragers that wear themselves out in the course of their duties to the colony... Are there heavy loads of pollen on the ones that can't fly ?

The only other thing you can watch for is any sign of deformed wings as that will prevent bees flying and is generally a sign that the colony has a heavy varroa load - in which case you may have to do something about it - not easy with a TBH. Although, as your colony only arrived a on 6th June it would mean that the queen had to start laying immediately if you were going to have new bees emerging with DWV today ... average time from egg to emergence 21 days.

You might want to have a quick look inside the hive to see what is going on.

 

[wessexmario]

let's do the sums...

say 20,000 bees in a colony.
they live for 6 weeks, let's call it 50 days for simple maths and to err generously.

so given a consistent emergence of young, every day 1/50 of the colony will die, that's 400 bees per colony, per day.

Even if many if not most will die while foraging, there'll still be far more than the 5 you counted that die in the vicinity of the hive every day.

 

[enrico]

Make sure they are not flying under the hive and spending all night under the mesh floor where they get too weak to fly and fall to the ground.
E

 

[Finman]

.
There dead bees too, if some foreign bee try to rob. They are killed on combs if not in entrance.

 

[pargyle]

Make sure they are not flying under the hive and spending all night under the mesh floor where they get too weak to fly and fall to the ground.
E

It's a Top Bar Hive with a solid floor ..

 

[pargyle]

let's do the sums...

say 20,000 bees in a colony.
they live for 6 weeks, let's call it 50 days for simple maths and to err generously.

so given a consistent emergence of young, every day 1/50 of the colony will die, that's 400 bees per colony, per day.

Even if many if not most will die while foraging, there'll still be far more than the 5 you counted that die in the vicinity of the hive every day.[/QUOTE

Probably not that many bees ... hived a small(ish) colony only three weeks ago - and initially it was really only on about four or five top bars - there were concerns in the first week that the colony was dwindlng and by 13th June there were still not eggs or brood present so may have been a cast.l

 

[enrico]

It's a Top Bar Hive with a solid floor ..

Oh yes!!! Silly me......he he. Sorry!

 

[pargyle]

Oh yes!!! Silly me......he he. Sorry!

You'll get no criticism from this quarter ! But, it's an interesting problem and I'm not sure what's going on as it's too soon for DWV on newly emerged bees so it can only be normal die off as far as I can see ?

What do you think ?

 

[JustAddBees]

Thanks for all of your replies and thoughts on this. My thoughts are that it is just natural having read your advice, but I hadn't noticed before and didn't expect to witness it. I just assumed that the majority would be lost away from the hive site. Do others often see struggling bees in the area surrounding their hives?

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[enrico]

Thanks for all of your replies and thoughts on this. My thoughts are that it is just natural having read your advice, but I hadn't noticed before and didn't expect to witness it. I just assumed that the majority would be lost away from the hive site. Do others often see struggling bees in the area surrounding their hives?

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Yes, depends on the weather. If it is cold they die inside and are ejected onto the grass outside.
E

 

[pargyle]

Yes ... I often see worn out foragers with a heavy pollen load mis judge the landing and once on the ground they do not always make it back into the air ... I've seen other bees come down and remove the pollen from them.

There are often dead bees in the vicinity of the hive - the mortuary bees remove them from the hive and I've seen two bees flying with a dead bee between them until they get about three or four feet from the hive when they drop them.

Whole fascinating subject on it's own ... I'm constantly amazed at how strong individual bees are and how well they cooperate for tasks that are more than one bees ability.

 

[Haywards]

Yesterday I watched a worker pulling a dead drone along a top bar of the frame to the end. Here it pushed the drone over the side, where there is a clear drop. Sure enough a couple of minutes later out came the bee with the drone (I still have a restricted central entrance). Here another bee helped pull the drone and dispatch it over the side. Fascinating