roaring

[keith pierce]

I was checking a hive today , and the queen had failed to return from a mating flight and i could hear them roar. i closed up the hive and was working on the hive beside it and i could still hear them. Luckly i had a queen hatching out in the incubator and fixed the situation.

 

[burren]

Good news !? no roaring on Sunday, check for eggs on 21st.

 

[burren]

Even better news, eggs and larvae seen on 18th in the "roaring" hive.
2nd hive at +27 after hatching, no eggs when also checked on 18th, putting in a capped queen cell tomorrow (from another source). 3rd hive, not quite sure about, have another queen cell for that one if I need it (from another source).

 

[Queens59]

Great - Lovely when it works isn't it?

 

[Tom Bick]

I visited one of my apiary’s yesterday at about 3.30pm and it was a nice day wandered round and just watched the entrances of 5 various hives two of them have virgins when suddenly the entrances of all the hives went crazy mainly drones streaming out of the hives but also plenty of worker’s to and the whole apiary was roaring it went on for about 15mins then settled down. I checked the hives with the virgins and would have loved to see one at an entrance to see if it was this that caused the sudden activity but no but it was rather nice all the same, I think they were just glad to see me.

 

[burren]

Great to see, you could be right Tom!

 

[Chris Luck]

If you have heard this roar you will know it for ever, it's different, not buzzing or even buzzing furiously, it's a laud deep, bass, vibrating ROAR, it's frantic fury and it stops as quickly as it starts.

Oh for a sound file of it.

Chris

 

[rockdoc]

I agree Chris. I had one of my hives roaring last week when I made them queenless due to her being a runt (small, damaged wing). Once heard never forgotten.

 

[JCD]

I put a post in the 'What did you do in the apiary today' thread yesterday, and wondered why one of my hives had eaten a whole super of stores in the last fortnight.
"I've got two very strong colonies....checked them both out today. On 31st August both colonies had one full super of honey which I'd deliberately left for them. Today, one colony still has a full super to go into winter, (good, good!) and the other one, the one in my back garden, has nothing left at all !! I'm sure they haven't been robbed by wasps, or anything else, they are so strong, and guard very well......so why would that be ? The hives are about 100yds apart. Sugar syrup is currently cooling down, and they will have some early in the morning."
I fed them with sugar syrup early this morning. I just took a quick look in my lunch hour to check they'd found the syrup. They had. The hive was roaring..... I was hoping that they were just very pleased to have been given the syrup, but having resurrected this thread from last year, I'm wondering if they're queenless. Would a queenless hive which is teeming with bees, eat up all of their stores which were planned for the winter?
I'll have a better look in there tomorrow.....see if I can see any eggs/young brood.
Thank you
J

 

[oliver90owner]

Bees don't plan ahead. They do whatever they can whenever they can. No income and loads of brood could mean that super being emptied quite quickly. Bee strain is sometimes an important factor.

Check the other one for brood, Q+.

 

[enrico]

I presume the super was over the bb. If it was under then they will have moved it into the bb, just a thought,
E

 

[beeno]

Hi Burren,
In my limited experience Q- hives usually have lots of stores as they generally don't have any brood to feed. However, I have noticed from my four hives (which I realise is a small sample) that Q+ hives without brood seems to be more prone to robbing. My thinking is that maybe it is not so much whether they have a queen, but more if they have brood? My money is on the robbing. My bees are very noisy at the moment, but they are not Q-. Perhaps it is not the quenless roar you are hearing. Let us know how you get on.