Something Is Not Right With This Beehive!

My colony of bees has got a queen, it's got brood, it's got stores, it's got sunshine, but there's something wrong with my beehive. Hi, I'm Laurence Ederson, Black Mansen Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. Down at the River Apiary again today, and I'm just getting some really nice weather down here at the end of the season. All of the colonies here are all over the Himalayan balsam. I'm quite amazed at how much weight they're putting on. The colonies look really, really good. 13 colonies here, and there is one standout colony, and it's not standing out for very good reasons. In fact, there is something wrong with this beehive. So in this video, I'm going to show you this beehive. I'm going to talk to you about the things that are wrong with it. I'm going to talk to you about why I think that's happening, and I'm going to tell you how I'm going to try and fix it and see if we can get them through the winter. So I'll get my bee suit on in a little bit, I'll get inside the hive, and I'll show you all of the things that I'm talking about. But the first signal that there was something wrong with this colony was that when I opened it up, it wasn't boiling over anywhere near as much as any of the other colonies. Its growth was stunted, and it wasn't stunted because I was taking frames out, it wasn't stunted because there was anything wrong with the queen, it just gave me that impression that something wasn't quite right with the colony as a whole, and that The growth was stunted. The next thing was the first round of trickle feeding that I did. I probably gave them 3 or 4 liters of syrup each, 1:1 sugar syrup, and this was back towards the middle of August. Now all of the bees were out foraging, they were coming back with loads of nectar, loads of pollen, and every single colony in this apiary here took down 3 or 4 liters of syrup literally overnight. It was gone bone dry. The colony in question here did not touch that That syrup. It was not interested in taking down syrup. And whenever a colony does that, I always raise suspicion on that colony that something might be wrong with it. Now, sometimes they don't find where the syrup is, and I get over that. I always give them a little trickle down the seam just to let them know there's something there, because sometimes you do, you put syrup in and they don't go and find it. So I eliminate that. The colony did not want to take down this syrup. There was something wrong with it. So I went to go and have a look through the colony, and at that point in time, I couldn't find the queen. There didn't appear to be any brood, but it looked like a strong colony. So first thing I'd do in that situation is I'd put a test frame in, put a test frame of eggs into this colony to see if they were going to draw out any queen cells because they might be queenless. And that might explain why there's stunted growth. Something wrong with the queen. Maybe they tried to supersede her. She went out to get mated and she didn't come back. And then there was an issue and that's why they're not growing as much. However, the plot thickens. So I put the test frame in. They didn't draw out any emergency cells on that frame. So in my mind, the colony is queen right. Stunted growth, not taking down syrup, but they're queen right. So at this point, there's not a huge amount you can do. You kind of think, well, I'm giving them every opportunity here. Could just be that they don't want to grow that much. There's a queen in there, she's having a brood break. You know what, I'm just going to leave them to it. They'll sort it out themselves. So I did a couple more rounds of trickle feeding on all of the other colonies here. Didn't give them any because they weren't taking anything down in the feeder. And then the next time I was here, I did an inspection. So I was like, oh, I want to get to the bottom of what's wrong with this beehive. There's something wrong with it. So I went in to have a look and I found brood, capped worker brood. I found eggs. So I'm thinking, right, there was a virgin in here. There was definitely a virgin knocking around. And then I found the queen with a white spot on her back. So the marked queen was in there. So at this point I'm thinking, what is wrong with my beehive? There's something wrong with it. And I'm sure you've all had instances like this where you're kind of thinking, what is going on with this beehive? But at that point I noticed something that I thought, here we go, I think I've solved what's wrong with this colony here. I'm coming down here today, I don't know what we're going to find in the beehive today. I'll continue the story and let you know what happened on that occasion. So I went in and I found a lot of deformed wing virus on the bees. I looked on the monitoring board, I found a lot of varroa on the board. I'm looking through the colony and I'm seeing varroa on the bees. So in my mind, I've solved the mystery a little bit, and the mystery was it was an incredibly high varroa load. I'd already treated with Apivar, so I'd put the Apivar strips in around the middle of August, which is what I always do at this apiary here. So I'm hoping now, first day of October— it's the 1st of October today— I'm hoping we're going to go in there and we're going to start to see that colony coming back around. 2 weeks ago I came up here and they had taken down all of the syrup in the feeder, So I'm thinking, finally they're taking down all the syrup in the feeder, and the frames were ripped and stripped bare. They had no stores whatsoever. So I'm thinking now, right, what's happened is they've got so weak, they've been so impacted by varroa, they're starting to get robbed out again. So I gave them a little bit more syrup thinking I'm probably making the situation worse here because I'm giving them more syrup. It's just going to attract more robbing bees. There's not much you can do in this situation. You need to kind of try and balance what's best for the colony Versus what's best for the apiary. You've got a varroa bomb colony, a colony that's really high with varroa. You don't want to be spreading that to other colonies. I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet today when I go in there. Let's wait and see what I do. There might be a bit of a sad ending to this story. I'll do my very best to avoid the sad ending to the story, but I need to get in there, see what the colony's like. I'll show you a couple of the frames on camera, see if we can see some deformed wing virus. I'll show you the general state of the colony, give it a heft, see how much weight is in it. Hopefully we can get the colony through. So I'll get my bee suit on, I'll get my smoker lit, let's go and have a look what's wrong with my beehive. Right, so this is the colony in question. You may remember this hive early on in the year. It's the hive that got attacked by badgers, and it's the hive that gave me the biggest spring crop. Absolutely ginormous, this colony was really, really big. You can see the badger damage still down on the front there. And just walking over to this colony, my heart sunk a little bit. I'm thinking, I don't think what I'm going to find in there is going to be very good. All of my other colonies up here, loads of activity on the Himalayan balsam, bringing in pollen, bringing in nectar. And I look down into this colony and I'm thinking, I don't think there's going to be any bees in there. I think we're going to find a complete and utter dead out, and I'm going to attribute that to heavy varroa loads. Right, so first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to give the hive a little bit of a heft. And they're really light, like incredibly light. So I'm not expecting to find a colony of bees with loads of stores and everything right in there. The best we can hope for is that I've got a starving colony that I can hopefully put some syrup in and get them back from the brink. Worst case is it's a complete dead out and there's no bees. Let's get in, have a look. Right, there's bees in there. That doesn't mean everything's okay. These could be robbing bees. So let's get in, take a look, and see See how that colony is getting on. I'm so happy to see that there's bees in there though, because we've done the apivar strips. So every week that we go on with this colony, they're queen right. They've not got much stores, but they've got the apivar strips in. So that apivar should be killing the mites week in, week out, reducing that varroa load, getting them to the point where maybe we can get them through the year. I'm so over the moon. I've got bees in here. Let's take a look, see how they're getting on. Right, so not the biggest colony in the world, but far from a deadout at all. You look there, you've probably got 7 or 8 frames of bees. What I noticed though is they were very, very angry when I opened that lid, so they're probably on defense mode because they're trying to get robbed out by all these other colonies. But we've got bees, so first thing, this is really, really good to see. Got 6 or 7 frames of bees. Let's see if we can find that queen, see if she's back laying again, see what the situation's like, and we'll see if we can find any deformed wing virus. So I was just going through the frames and I noticed that a bee had its head poking in. I pulled that bee out and it's in a really bad way. You look at that bee there, you look at this bee, and I know I'm being a little bit rough on it, but it is basically dead. It's not quite dead yet, but it's not well, not a healthy bee. And this is what you can see. These are the viruses that can be brought upon by varroa. Could be something else, of course, but that's just a sign that there's something wrong with the hive. Shouldn't see dead or dying bees in a hive. A healthy colony will do really, really well at clearing out all of those dead bees, or any dead bees at all. They will clear them out. They won't just kind of tolerate them. So you look there, found a dead bee, or a very close to being dead bee. Not a good sign. Now I have to say the situation's definitely improved since the last time I was here. Take a look at this bee. That is classic deformed wing virus. It's a really bad case of deformed wing virus as well. So that bee, no use to anybody, completely deformed wings. So I told you there was a marked queen in here. There she is. Nothing wrong with the queen. There's brood in all stages. There's larva, there's eggs. The problem in this colony is Purely down to the amount of Varroa that's here. Just noticed something else over here as well, which is an emerging bee that doesn't look very well. Emerging bees should be really, really active. They should be getting fed. That's a sign that the colony is very, very low on stores. Good amount of pollen on this frame though, so that's good to see. They've got the protein they need. They're struggling here because they've been robbed out. They have suffered a battle. You can tell this here. There's not enough bees in this colony to sustain the amount of brood. They've slowed right down, and then they're dealing with a high varroa load as well. So the question I asked at the beginning was, what's wrong with my beehive? And this colony of bees is suffering from a high varroa load, which has meant that they've really slowed down their growth. They've slowed down the amount of brood. It's restricted the amount of bees, so you've got a small colony that's opened them up to robbing. So other bees have come in here and they've robbed out what's in there, and then the bees that are remaining are struggling to bring enough nectar in to sustain both themselves and the brood. If you're seeing this at the back end of October and you haven't treated for varroa yet, I don't think you're going to get your bees through the winter, and I hate to be completely blunt about that. But they really are on a knife edge here, and I started treating these with Apivar in the middle of August. And if you had to say to me, will you get this beehive through winter? I'd say it's probably 60/40 in favor of it not coming through the winter. However, you've got to try and get them through as best as you possibly can. So what I would suggest, if you're finding this anytime kind of between middle of August and the first week of October, somewhere around there, you need to go in and you need to do an immediate varroa treatment. Now do not treat them with Max. The last thing you want to do is stress a colony like this out. Max will just wipe this colony out straight away. They're not strong enough to be able to cope with Max, in my personal experience. What I would be doing is I would be going for an ApiBioxa treatment 5 days apart, and you want to go for at least 4 or 5 treatments. And then I would add Apivar into that once you've completed that treatment system as well. My colony of bees here, they've had the Apivar strips since the middle of August. They're going to come out in the middle of October. Hopefully that will give them a sufficient drop, and then I'm going to go in early with my apibioxal on this one. I'll give them a blast maybe end of October, and then I'll give them a blast at the beginning of December as well. Try and get that mite drop as low as possible. I'm also going to get the feeder on. I have to give them a feed because they've not got any stores in there. If I put the feeders on, I give them 10 litres of syrup, and all of the other bees come and steal it and rob it, there's nothing I can do. Like, this colony, it needs Syrup. So I'll do my best not to spill it, I'll do my best not to attract any unwanted attention, but now that the temperatures have dropped a little bit, should be a little bit easier for them to protect against robbing. Could also reduce the entrance down as much as you possibly can, get it down to maybe like a 1 or 2 bee entrance, and then that will make it much easier for them to defend as well. I told you, no-nonsense beekeeping. This is not a vanity project, and it's not me saying look how great all of these beehives are. I'll show you the bad stuff as well. This hive here, this is a failing hive. If I had to guess, I'd say we're not going to get this one through. And I'm always completely open and honest. If things don't go well, if beehives fail, I'll show you them on my YouTube channel. I hope you enjoyed that video. I hope you found it useful. I hope your bees are in a much better state than this. 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.