Rescue of weak stingless bee hive, tips

Discussion in 'Breeding, Raising, Feeding and Caring for Animals' started by kalium, Oct 21, 2013.

  1. kalium

    kalium New Member

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    Hi all.

    I'd had on the property a stingless bee hive that had been damaged from cutting up firewood (half of the brood was missing it seemed.
    I tried to plug it up as best I could.

    That was a couple of months ago. I've got a couple of books on stingless bees and transferring them, and so followed them pretty closely today when
    transferred them to their new bee hive that I made for them. I followed all given advice, so hopefully everything is OK.

    The amount of brood did not seem like much (compared to photos I've seen anyway), maybe 10cm in diamater and a couple of inches high. I also noticed
    their was some fly larvae in the honey pots I removed.

    Now there are a couple of sryphid flies hanging right around the entrance (I guess that's normal), and I'm paranoid that they have laid larvae during the transfer, and being not a very strong
    hive, I'm a bit worried that they will not deal with it well.

    Is it a wise to open the hive up at night and look for intruders? Should I just let be what will be? I'd really like this hive to survive, as it's my only one and I don't want to shell out
    the $$$ to buy one ;)

    Cheers
     
  2. mischief

    mischief Senior Member

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    Hi and welcome,

    I know absolutely nothing about stingless bees but I did see these being mentioned on the Milkwood forum. Not to drive you away, but you have been waiting ALL DAY for someone to help you and it sounds like you need to know NOW.
    Can you keep us posted on how you get on with them?
     
  3. briansworms

    briansworms Junior Member

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    Hello kalium and welcome to the Forum.

    I guess I am too late and you have done what you were going to do. I have had no experience with stingless bees except look at the one at a friends house. I did keep honey bees for about 8 years as a hobby. A couple of months ago would have been Winter so brood would be down plus any loss that may have occurred with the chainsaw. The Queen may have been lost back then and they may have a new Queen now. Winter is not a time brood normally builds up unless conditions are optimal. Spring is usually when the populations tend to build up.
    Any photos you have seen would be of hives in prime condition and not lost part of their brood ,workers and honey stores. The larvae you saw may be young grubs just hatched from the eggs.

    Never open the hive at night. For a start everybody is home and you might end up killing many bees just trying to do what you want to do. They could lose too much heat from being exposed to the cool night air and you could end up chilling the brood. You are always best to do it during the day and then in the morning. Just ensure it is a sunny warm day with little wind. You could just leave them alone and allow them to recover naturally if they can.
     
  4. Grasshopper

    Grasshopper Senior Member

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    Make sure they are the right way up
     
  5. kalium

    kalium New Member

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    Well, I ended up just doing nothing for the time being :)

    I'm going to try and make a fly trap to put in the hive, as well as see if I can do something about the syrphid flies (apart from swatting them, which I've also been doing).

    BTW, good point about opening the box at night, that makes perfect sense. For some reason though I was thinking that would be a good time to open it up...
     
  6. S.O.P

    S.O.P Moderator

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    Yes, $220 for the same course I did for $25 with the same entomologist. Talk about disappointing.

    Hi kalium,

    I've rescued a few hives, split a heap and seen a few fail too. I'm not at the level of someone like Dr Tim Heard, and if you have the usual suspects in the book department, you should be entirely covered.

    Probably the damage was caused (larvae attack) when it was cut for firewood (similar to what we do when we put a chainsaw through the ones we recover). Secret is to either move into a hive box immediately, if you have one, or seal it 100% and wait it out. I wouldn't cut one up, seal it, move it, then reopen it shortly after because it's way too much for them to handle. They need to build up the resources to seal the entrances quickly and by moving them too often, you set that ability back. Even moving the hive more than 1m can set all the scouts back.

    What do you mean by putting a fly trap in the hive? Actually opening the box back up again? No, I wouldn't do that. They weld the cracks together quite quickly so by re-opening, there goes all that hard work.

    If the flies are getting heavy, make sure all your cracks around the box are well sealed, and hope the bees are working frantically to protect their entrance. Look for bees flying out backwards, they are the new scouts working out where the box is in relation to everything. Look for bees coming in with pollen too.

    I would only open a healthy box. I would only open an unhealthy box at least 2-4 weeks after the activity had stopped, or all you see are ants and flyies/wasps leaving the entrance.
     

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