I have noticed during my years of keeping bees, that the late summer and early fall, that the populations of yellow jacket wasps are stronger compared to spring and early summer here in Connecticut. Yellow jackets are known to attack bee colonies and I had concerns about 3 hives at the top of my hill. The last time I was up there was about a week ago, when I was weed wacking in the bee yard, I didn’t notice any negative activity and now there were suddenly a lot of dead bees in front of those hives, piles of dead bees. Ugh!
What could be happening? Starvation, yellow jackets, Varroa Mites, other diseases, poison; it could be any of those, honestly. So I looked and observed, while I looked at my newer hives on the outside I didn’t notice any yellow jacket activity near the hives. Initially, I thought that it could just be starvation. The summer has been dry which would lead to less native flowers blooming, and my bees here rely on that as a food source. I didn’t see any robbing of these hives either, so my thought why I came to the conclusion that these two hives were they were starving. I pulled a few frames out and what would normally have food stores, were empty so I decided to put a triple “threat” of food on them. A pollen patty substitute, sugar blocks made with apple cider vinegar, and just to give them a bigger boost, 1:1 sugar water with added bee vitamins, which the bees on hive #8, took to very quickly.
Hive #4 told me a story of distress. I saw honeybees being removed which is a sign of robbing, so I placed an entrance reducer on the entrance. I saw yellow jackets in the pile of bees in front of this hive. At that time, I planned the same remedy for that hive, to feed them. Yet, this hive was a little bit different from the other two, I had honey supers on this hive and I needed to figure out where to place them.
The next day, with all of my bee food substitutes in hand, I prepared hive for their food treatment. I was noticing that the drone bees were being escorted out of the hive, which was another sign of distress. I removed the honey supers, put the food on, and I was hoping that the bees on the honey supers would return home that evening but they didn’t, I made the choice for the bees to finish out the robbing that they were doing next to Hive #4 so I can pick up the beehive components the next day when they were all empty. It wasn’t a favorite decision of mine, as it could promote robbing of the nearby hive.
The next evening, I brought the honey supers off of the hill and a few bees traveled down with me down near house. I brushed them off in the tall grass as the night was getting darker. That gave them a little bit of protection before the morning sun and time to find their way home.
Today, I went up into the bee yard, I did notice that yellow jackets were trying to enter through the back of the bottom board in hive #8. It is a newer screened bottom board, so I’m hoping that they haven’t chewed through the wire mesh and the bees are still protected. I plan on sealing that area off to keep them out.
On the other hand, I didn’t see any honeybees or wasps being evicted from those three hives. I’m taking that as a positive sign. Another, positive sign is that we have sunflowers blooming on a pile of dirt that my daughter planted. The bees are loving that. The goldenrod is getting ready to bloom as well, the few iron weed plants that I have seen on my property have been blooming. One should always take the good with the bad.
I thank you for reading and please bee kind. I will leave you with a few pictures. Enjoy.
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