Laurence Edwards explains how to spot dead or dying honeybee colonies and protect the rest of your apiary. Seal the entrance in late summer or fall to prevent disease spread and robbing, then sterilize the equipment by burning, scorching, or bleaching. A heavy-looking hive in early winter or spring is often a dead colony.
In this video, I'm going to talk to you about deadouts, how to try and prevent them, but more importantly, how to protect the rest of your apiary from the risks that they carry. Now, I've not been the best at managing these historically, although whenever I find a colony kind of in the early winter or early spring that is a deadout, I always seal them up, always completely seal them, because that's the biggest risk, is that the colony gets robbed out. And when we start to talk about EFB and you talk about infected frames, infected brood, infected honey, you think if you've got an apiary where a colony dies out and then they've not got any bees to protect them from that infected honey and all of the bees in that apiary go and rob that honey and bring it back to their hives, it is the biggest possible risk that you've got and you need to mitigate it as early as you possibly can. So as I said previously, early winter, late winter, if I find a colony that's dead or if I find a colony that's unusually heavy, that's generally a sign that they're not taking down the feed and that's generally a sign that they're dead inside. So when I'm doing my hefting, there's nothing wrong with going in after you do a heft and you think, wow, that's a really heavy colony, Crack the crown board open, 2-second little glance inside, it will become very quickly apparent if that colony is dead or if that colony is alive. Don't worry about the heat escaping. I'm not saying to open it for 20 minutes and do a video and talk about it, but for 10 seconds you're really not going to do too much damage to that colony of bees. They will recover, and what you're doing is you're mitigating the risk that a dead-out colony goes unnoticed into the spring and then all of your colonies get infected. Now the reason I'm doing this video now is because I found a colony that's in a situation where it is dwindling. It is dying. It's dying as a result of a poorly mated queen, and I've completely changed my approach to how I manage this. So in previous seasons, what I would have done here is I would have got that colony, I would have taken the beehive away, I would have shaken all the frames out, and I would have let the bees go up into the air, and I would let them go and kind of beg their way into all of the adjacent colonies. Looking back at that now, I kind of think maybe that's not the best advice. And I'm talking here for my own bees. I'm not saying that everybody should do this. This is just the changes that I'm making going forward. But that's previously what I would have done. What I'm doing now is very different. I'm analyzing that colony and saying, okay, there's like 2 or 3 frames of bees in there, not really losing that many bees. I'm assuming that all of the frames are going to be infected, so I'm not going to use any of the frames and I'm not going to use any of the bees, and there's no queen in there. So really, what's the value of that colony for me? The value is in the actual boxes and the beehive. So my approach has completely changed, and what I'm doing now is I'm going and taking that colony and I'm sealing up the entrance in August. Okay, it's coming up to the first week of September now, and I'm just going to let that colony die. And it might seem a little bit harsh— 2 or 3 frames of bees in there, okay, those bees will die, and I'll have to deal with some manky frames with some manky brood maybe and some manky bees on it. But I'm effectively isolating the rest of the colony from any of the risk that sits inside that beehive. And then what I'll do in the winter when all of the bees are not flying, I can open it up safely, burn all of the frames or sterilize all of the frames, melt them out Scorch down all of the boxes, bleach them if they're poly, and then I could just use that beehive again the next season. And I completely mitigated the risk of any disease in that colony spreading throughout the apiary. What have I lost? I've lost probably 2 fistfuls of bees. What have I gained? I've gained a real huge amount of protection against any disease in that colony. So that's going to be my plan going forward. When I get towards the end of the year, if a colony's quite clearly going to die or is not going to get through the winter, I'm going to cut my losses early and I'm going to seal that colony up. They will die, all the bees will die. I'll clean it up over winter and I'll reuse the boxes and I'll reuse the frames if I'm going to sterilize them. If not, I'll just burn the frames and burn the wax and start over again. Now that doesn't mean I'm going to do that in the middle of the year. If I can go in there, identify it's a drone-laying queen, if I can find the queen, I'll just go in there, kill the queen, give them a new cell, give them a mated queen, and we can build that colony back up organically from the resources they've got I'm not boosting it up, I'm not adding frames of brood. I want to just kind of try and restrict each and every colony as much as practically possible without sharing the resources throughout the apiary. So I'll get my bee suit on, I'll go and show you this colony and give you an example of one where I'm cutting the losses late in the season to try and mitigate the spread of disease in the early spring. Right, this is the colony here that's going to be a dead out in a matter of months, probably a matter of weeks. I've closed up all the entrances, but I'm going to open it up now just to show you what's wrong with the colony inside. And why I've closed it up. Now this has nothing to do with the fact that this is my cork insulated beehive. I'm a little bit gutted, but it gives me a chance to scorch it down, see how it goes through next winter. This one here, clearly a mating issue, and we've got a drone laying queen. So as you can see, handful of bees, barely a fistful of bees. Absolutely no point whatsoever me doing anything with this colony. I know I'm opening it up a little bit with the bees coming out now, risk of them flying off. I'm going to close them up as quick as I possibly can, but if you've got a colony like this, there's literally nothing you can do at this time of the year. I'd say it's better to cut your losses, close them up, seal them in, and deal with them in the winter.
