Dead Bees

September 15,2024
P. Michael Henderson

I went out this morning to look at the bees and was surprised - there were a lot of dead bees around the hives.  It's a lot of bees but not enough to cause serious problems to a hive.  The queen can lay 1,000 eggs a day and I don't think there's 1,000 dead bees here.

It's hard to say what the cause of this is.  I've heard that animals, such as skunks, will come to a hive and try to eat bees.  The workers will come out to defend the hive and attempt to sting the animal.  This doesn't look like the effect of poison.  That usually results in a pile of bees right in front of the hive.

I cleaned up the bees and then put an entrance reducer on all of the hives.

I also set up a trail camera pointed at the hives to see if it captures an animal trying to get into the hives.

I'll follow up as I learn anything.

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9/16/2024 Monday  It's not unusual for me to find some dead bees around the hives in the morning, and this morning the number of dead bees was about normal.  Maybe a bit more than normal but acceptable.  There was nothing on the trail camera so no animals were around the hives.

I have no idea what caused that die-off on Sunday.  It would be very unusual for robbing to occur overnight, and we have forage available.  And all the hives are strong - it's unusual for a hive to attempt to rob another strong hive.  Could it have been some other insect? 

For now, I'll have to write this off to "unknown".

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10/14/2024  I still have no idea what could have caused that die-off but everything has been back to normal for the last month.  I know the hives kick out the drones in the fall, and maybe that's what it was.  I should have looked carefully at the dead bees to see if they were drones.