Help! Bees left hive and moved into tree.

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If you can please could you post some pictures? I would be really interested to see what asian honey bees look like.
 
Ah yes, I meant tomorrow-Saturday, when I (she) won't be working. I would also much prefer to be unconscious at that time but as a school teacher with a long commute, I don't have the option. 6 am - the best time of the day...

So tomorrow I will brave opening the hive to see what we have left. I'll take pictures - not sure if there will be any of bees though...
 
Just a thought.

If the queen, some brood and the house bees are still in the hive, it might be worth feeding them up with some syrup.

Just be careful to do it in a way that does not attract the hornets - say put a jar over a hole in the top and cover it all with something to stop the scavengers working out what is underneath.

Also, if you only have a few bees left in the hive make sure they have only a small entrance to defend
 
antonia, hope you find enough for some optimism and Chrismcd has a point about closing down the entrance....

fingers crossed! and looking forward to the photos

rich
 
Very much looking forward to seeing if you were able to get photos, antoniahk ...
 
The first link shows what we found on Saturday - no bees at all, honey in the combs, dead larvae, a few capped cells, something that seems to be wax moth larvae (but very small, so I think they came after the bees left). Nothing else in the hive, no signs of hornet/wasp attack. The second link shows the bees a week ago, just 4 days before they all left. Maybe we shouldn't have looked in the hive?

http://beescheungchau.blogspot.com/2011/11/bee-fail.html

http://beescheungchau.blogspot.com/2011/11/bees-week-one.html

Our plan now is to continue with the bee research (books/internet) and start again in the spring, this time following the advice we had noted but not quite taken in, to start with two hives. Thank you to everyone who gave advice and encouragement.
 
A few observations from your photos - but please bear in mind i have no idea of beekeeping practices n your area or what hives are used
The hive you have shown seems to be a Nucleus hive (maybe six or seven frames in total) so maybe you would have been looking to transfer them to a larger hive when the colony had grown.
It seems you were given quite a small colony with only two frames of bees, but next time you should give them a little room to expand - starting with another three frames of undrawn foundation - maybe lack of space was a contributing factor in them absconding.
I know this is not that helpful now and its not a criticism but something to bear in mind for next year - you constantly learn something new when beekeeping probably someone more knowledgable woill be along now and set us both right!
 
Hi, thanks for the pics, and a quick question, did you see the queen when you bought the bees from the beefarmer? If you were given a couple of frames of bees but without a queen it may explain why they took off? Apologies if you already stated earlier in the thread!
 
The hive seems to be the usual one used in Hong Kong, and yes, it only holds 8 frames. The bee farmer told us two frames would be ok, and also told us to keep the extra space in the hive as small as possible to prevent other bugs from moving in while the colony was still small. But the space the bees moved to was definitely a lot bigger, so lack of space may well have been the problem, I suppose. There are several other people in the area who have started beekeeping fairly recently, either with bees from the same farmer or wild swarms, and I'm hoping that we can meet up and compare notes before we try again ourselves.

There was definitely a queen when the bees were packed up for the journey back here, and the bees seemed perfectly happy after first week here. The temperature dropped about 10 degrees that week though so I don't know if that might have sent them looking for somewhere warmer. That's one reason we're going to wait until spring to try again as it seems like a more logical time (with hindsight).
 
If you have chance to visit other beeks, it should give you some idea of what to expect. Cerana colonies are smaller, which is why the hives are smaller.
When placing the frames in the hive, I should imagine a similar routine; two frames central with a frame of foundation or comb either side, then dummy boards either side and perhaps fill any further space to each wall with sacking. When bees are building up nicely, give them full complement of frames
 
looking at the photos there seems to be no evidence of brood of any description - and hence no evidence of mated queen present since the nuc came into your possession.
maybe they absconded on a mating flight.
 
I think that is just my bad quality photography. There were all stages of larvae left behind, and some capped cells, so certainly someone was laying eggs in there since the bees were moved here.
 
A few observations from your photos - but please bear in mind i have no idea of beekeeping practices n your area or what hives are used
The hive you have shown seems to be a Nucleus hive (maybe six or seven frames in total) so maybe you would have been looking to transfer them to a larger hive when the colony had grown.

The photos look like A. Cerana (Asian honeybee) which maintains smaller colonies...
 
Yes, they are Asian Honeybees, and the hive we have seems to be the kind used all over Hong Kong. That might be because it's best, but it's equally likely that it's just what has always been used and no one has tried anything else. HK is very big on the traditional way of doing things. We're going to spend some time over the winter putting together a top bar hive to see if that works (I believe they are used in Malaysia, so they might well work here too), and see how we go with that in the spring when, all being well, we might get some bees and manage to keep them.
 

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