My Beehive Has Failed - Failed Beehive Split - How To Rescue a Starving Colony - Bees are Robbing!

It's been 3 weeks since we introduced a queen with a broken leg. In this video, we're going to see if the colony has superseded her. Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. Beautiful sunny day down at the River Apiary today. We're going to get back into that colony after 3 weeks, check to see if she's been introduced successfully, and check to see whether they're trying to supersede her. So I get my bee suit on, get my smoker on. Let's go and see if she's been introduced successfully and if they're trying to supersede her. Right, so here's our colony. Good amount of activity at the entrance. Let's get in, see if we can find that queen. And I'm really, really sad to report, but not only have they killed the queen, but the split has failed. So in this video, I'm going to show you what happens when splits fail, because this is a really useful exercise in terms of making split in the same apiary. What can go wrong? And we talk about this all the time, and all of my videos are based around making splits in different apiaries— making the split, taking that split off to a different apiary. I do that because it's easier to balance the numbers, but there is a big risk in making splits in your own apiary. And that is, if you're making a split, putting a nice amount of stores in there, putting some brood in there, putting some bees in there, putting a new queen in there, This time with a broken leg. What you're doing is you're making a different unit in that same apiary. A lot of the bees will drift back to the original colony, and if they sense that there is food up for grabs in the new split, they can rob it out. Now, if you go back to this original video, there was a huge amount of bees in here. Big, strong colony of bees, queen with a broken leg, brood in all stages. I was expecting to come back here today and to see, okay, maybe a superseded queen, maybe some queen cells, maybe some virgins. Definitely wasn't expecting to see this. So what you are seeing here is a colony that is rapidly dying from starvation. Really easy. As soon as you open up a colony, it's so easy to tell when there's something wrong. It's a warm day here today. All of the other colonies are active. You've got a few flying in and out of that entrance, but the majority of them inside the hive are so slow and lethargic on those top bars. This is the kind of activity that you would expect to see in December or January, really slow movement, cold temperatures, but it's about 20 degrees here today. You look at the other colonies, they're flying all around, lots of business inside the hive and outside the hive. This here, Is not good behavior, and it's driven by the fact that the colony is starving. So you take a look at the frame there. I've picked up colonies and they're way worse than this in terms of starving. At least these ones are still moving. We will be able to save every single last one of these bees here, and I'll cover that later on in this video. But just look at the frame, look how empty it is. There is not a single gram of stores or nectar. Or brood in all stages or anything in there. So I've been through this colony numerous times. There is no sign of that queen. So I have to say that the queen didn't make it. Probably not because she had a broken leg. It's actually because of another reason, that they've been robbed out. That's what's happened here. It's the only explanation because the last 3 weeks the weather's been really nice. All of the other colonies here are putting on weight, packing it in. What's happened here is we've made a split in the same apiary. The worker bees have gone back to their own hive, and they have alerted the hive to the presence of stores in a different location. They've come back, they've robbed it out, they've killed the queen, and they've just left me two frames of very hungry, lethargic bees. So how rubbish is that? I told you at the very beginning when I did this channel that I will always show you the bad stuff as well as the good stuff. Things don't go right every single time, and with wild animals and livestock, things can happen that are just out of your control. Only takes a couple of bees to go back and to alert another hive that there's a good food source here, and then they come back and rob it out. It's just not a strong enough split. So if I have to kind of look for any feedback or any way that I could improve, maybe I should have made that split a little bit bigger. The way to mitigate it entirely is just to take that split off to another apiary, and then this definitely won't happen. However, we are where we are. As I said, I'll always show you the bad stuff. What we need to do though is understand what is the best way forward here now. So let's evaluate what we've got. We've got 2 frames of bees, very hungry, lethargic bees. No queen, no brood, no capped brood, no eggs, no stores. We've effectively got an empty hive with some flying bees there. I'm not going to try and save this colony. I'm not going to kill it. I'm not going to kill the bees. All I'm going to go and do is I'll go and open up another colony into the supers, and I'll just shake these bees into the supers. They will be absolutely fine. There's no risk of these bees going and killing the queen in a queen-right colony because they are just hungry. They're only going to want to go and feed, eat some food, and then they'll be fine. They'll be well and truly integrated. Easiest thing to do in the world. However, if you see this in your colonies and there is brood in all stages and there's eggs and there's a queen, Then definitely you can save this colony really, really easily. All you need to do is feed them, and don't think that you can just put the feeder on— way too late for that. You need to get syrup into the frames as they are here. Believe it or not, the cells in a frame are tilted up ever so slightly at an angle, so you can put liquid syrup into a frame like this and it stays in it. So all you want to do, take the frame like that, fill it up with syrup, get 2 frames In between the 2 frames of bees, make sure that the bees are well and truly on that syrup, then get the feeder on, then fill the feeder up with syrup as well. Reduce the entrance down as much as you possibly can to eliminate other robbing bees coming back or wasps, and then you just got to cross your fingers and hope that what you've done is enough to get the colony back from the brink. But this is really bad. They're probably 24 hours away here from just completely collapsing. There's no food, there's no nectar, and the bees are barely moving. But it just goes to show though, you need to be on top of it with the splits. These are the kind of things that can happen. So not only here have we lost a split, we've lost the queen with a broken leg as well. I hold my hands up, I'll always show you the bad stuff that's happened as well, 'cause it's good for me to learn, and hopefully you can take something from it as well. Right, now I'm just gonna throw the biggest curveball in the world. What I've done here is I've looked into this colony, I've taken out the queen cage because I know I popped the tab on the queen cage. I've put it off to one side. I've looked down into this colony here and they're starving, so I've just assumed the queen is out in this colony. She's still in the cage 3 weeks later. The queen is still in the cage. I cannot believe it. I took the tab off and the colony is just so weak. They've just all drifted back and they've not even bothered to eat through the fondant. So now not only have I got a queen With a broken leg, she's been stuck in a cage, probably not being fed that well for three weeks. I am sorry. What an absolute nightmare! Like I said, this is just the bloopers reel to end all bloopers reels. What an absolute shocker! All is not lost. All is definitely not lost. What we can do now is we can say, right, we've got a queen in this colony. The colony is queen right. They will have accepted that queen. So I'm not going to shake the bees out now because. Ultimately, I've got a little colony here, tiny little thing, but I've got the makings of a colony because I've got a queen. She's got a broken leg and she's been in a cage for 3 weeks, but nonetheless, she is still alive and she probably just needs a good feed to get her going. So how about this? I'm going to try and save this colony, this starving colony with a queen with a broken leg that's been trapped in a cage for 3 weeks, and I'll show you how to do that now on this video. So there is my queen. Hopefully you can see her there. Unbelievable that she has been in that cage for three weeks in a starving colony, and she's still alive. That is remarkable. Really, really happy that she's still alive. Still going to give her a chance. And luckily, yeah, look, it wasn't me that made a mistake that I didn't pop the tab. They've just not eaten through the fondant. It's like they've completely abandoned her. Very, very strange indeed. However. I love a challenge. Can't beat a challenge when it comes to beekeeping. All is not lost here. What we're going to do, small colony, we're going to get one frame of emerging brood, we're going to get some stores, we're going to get some syrup onto this colony, we're going to get that queen directly onto the frames, and then we're going to come back and see if we can save this colony from the absolute brink. Right, so the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to identify where is best to place this frame of brood. I'm going to go straight in the middle of the 2 frames of bees, and it does— I know this is a real big risk putting this frame of brood in there, but I'm willing to sacrifice one frame of brood to see if we can get this colony going again. Talk about the sacrifice, because we need to get the bees all over that brood to keep it warm so they can build up the numbers. But hey, let's have a go of it. Go for one frame of brood, put that in the middle of the cluster of starving bees. Not the nicest pattern in the world, but still a pretty decent Frame of brood. Got a little bit of stores in the corner as well. I'm going to bruise those stores to make sure that it's accessible to the bees. Just going to get my hive tool out, bruise those stores a little bit. Immediately, look at that! All of the bees have come onto that brood and said, "Wow, what is going on there?" They can smell the food. We caught this one just in time. And they're already on it. So that frame of brood didn't have a single bee on it when I lay that down there. Obviously, if you put bees in, they're going to fight. That was just a single frame of brood. Bees are very happy already. Next frame along, I've gone and taken a frame of stores, 50% capped, 50% open, from another hive. I'm going to bruise all of the wax cappings on that one as well, and I'm going to place that directly next to the frame of brood in between those 2 frames of bees. So there we go, I've bruised those wax cappings, lots of open nectar in there as well. The bees are gonna love that. Take that frame, face it inwards into that frame of brood, and then the final thing to do is we're gonna finally release this queen from her cage. Probably gonna have been 4 weeks, I think, once you take into account the fact that she was with me for a few days before I came and did this video. We're just gonna open the cage and we're gonna let the queen walk in. And there she goes. You can see she's getting a little bit of attention. The risk of her killing her here is so incredibly low. All the bees care about is going and eating food now. She's been in there for 3 weeks. They're not gonna kill her. They might say, okay, she's got a broken leg, and I think you can see the broken leg really well in this image here, but I'm willing to run that chance. I think they're going to accept this queen now. They're certainly going to give her a little run, let her lay some eggs, get that colony building back up again, because they've got no other option at the moment. You couldn't get more hopelessly queenless than this. No eggs, no brood, no stores, no pollen. I know I've just added that frame of brood, but the colony won't have even realized that yet. This queen is going to be very, very easy to introduce. She's weak. She can't even get herself off that there. I'm just going to release her leg. She's probably got a little bit trapped. So she doesn't look good, does she? Really, really doesn't look good. She is so weak and frail with a broken leg. But look at the bees. They're taking care of her. They're feeding her. They're not going to kill her because it's their last hope. At requeening. They're going to do everything they can to take care of that queen, feed her, which is what they've been doing for the past few weeks as well. I'm not going to say I'm excited to see what goes on here because I do feel a little bit bad. Maybe I should have come back and checked a little bit earlier, but as far as I was concerned, it would have taken them 2 seconds to eat through that fondant. They probably started getting robbed out straight away, and then all of the bees that were eating out the fondant, they would have just Gone into defense mode and tried to protect the colony from being robbed out. Right, so the queen has wandered off now down into the colony. They've given her a little bit of a feed. Who knows what's going to happen with this one? As always, put a comment up, see if you can guess what happens, because there is no way that anybody on the first video here would have guessed that this was going to happen. I certainly didn't. I just didn't even consider that this was an issue. What I'm going to do now to finish it off, I've added a frame of brood. I've added a frame of stores. Gonna get the feeder on as well now and just give them 1 or 2 liters of syrup. Don't need to go wild, but as soon as they build their strength back up again, they're really depleted. They're gonna need an ongoing source of food. So I'm just gonna give them 1:1 sugar syrup. We'll close them back up and then we'll come back again in 3 weeks and we'll see what's happened. So as I've been doing this, I've decided against feeding them syrup. Just as I've been looking there, there's some real attraction from the bees here just from putting the feeder on. Obviously attracted to that, so I'm going to remove that straight away. Oh, no. And I'm just going to leave the colony as it is. I don't want to attract this colony to be robbed out again. Giving them a frame of feed. I'm going to come back in a little while and I'm going to make sure that they've got enough food. But you can already see here, this is really not good. I'm going to get the roof on. You've got lots of robbing bees. They're trying to get in. They're trying to get that food. Wow. So that is it. The flows are well and truly over. The bees are onto robbing. All I had to do was bring over a feeder, Bring out a bottle of sugar syrup, and they were all over this colony here. Clearly they know it's a food source, so I'm going to have to do everything I possibly can to try and protect this nuc. First thing I'm going to do is I'm going to move it away from where it is. Right, so I've just put it in a new location that will hopefully put off all the robber bees over there. They won't know where this is. And then for a bit of added protection, I'm going to stuff loads of grass in the entrance, make it really, really secure. I don't want anything more than a single bee space in or out, and even if I have to knock them in for 48 hours, 72 hours, that gives them a better chance of staying alive than other bees coming and robbing them out again. I'm going to get the grass in, see if we can keep the entrance secure. Now I know you're thinking reorientation, they're going to be going back over there. Colonies like that, when they're that weak, they're that fragile, you just need to go all out to give them what they need to survive. You might lose a few, but they're probably going to have been stuck in there for a few days anyway. They will reorientate back to this spot. It's not an issue. The main issue here is stopping this colony being robbed out, giving the bees enough food to get back on track. So there we go. That's it for the video. I did not think that was the video I was coming down here to do today. I was really prepared to come down and be all kind of smug and say, oh wow, look, here's the queen that I've introduced with the broken leg. And they hadn't released her from the cage and the colony had been robbed out. Things do not always go to plan. But hopefully that makes the videos a little bit more enjoyable. You don't always see what's coming. I'll definitely update this video again though. 3 weeks' time, hopefully we'll have a laying queen in there. As always, please hit the subscribe button, please hit the bell so you're notified of every video, and I'll see you next time. Bye.