Lost a split

1234 Views 8 Replies 4 Participants Last post by rast, Jun 26, 2009

rast

Discussion Starter · Jun 23, 2009

Well shucks, great way to start a first post. A couple of walkaway splits about 1 1/2 months old looked really good Thurs. night. Checked them Sun. and one had bull ants coming and going from the 1" entrance. Opened it up and had bull ants all in it. Dead ants and bees all over the bottom screen. Got all the ants out as I could tearing it apart, almost started a grass fire with my propane torch killing them (well, did but got it out). Had maybe 1 1/2 frames of bees left. Set it up about 2 ft higher on a stand. Last night I came home intending to reinforce it with some frames from another hive and found it being robbed. All but about 1 frame of honey total left, the bees all in front of or in the hive dying. The queen still trying to crawl on her side on the bottom board screen. The robbers were from another hive of mine.
The life of a small beekeeper.

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rast

Discussion Starter · #3 · Jun 24, 2009

Well G3farms, I'm not sure. New problem. I do think they weakened it enough for the robbers to finish it off. When I found the ants in there, they were not being robbed, lots of dead bees and dead ants on the bottom board. Looked salvageable til the robbers set in. I did not know bees could kill ants. Now what we call bull ants are about 1/4"-3/8" long, redish/orange and black with a big ol set of pinchers on the front. Usually live in the ground. Hurts worse than any bee sting when one gets ya. I set one of my homemade ant traps down there and got a ton of fire ants, but none of the bull ants. I had a deadout that bull ants layed in last year, one egg per cell.
The robbing hive was opportunistic, this hive was 100yrds away, the other split is about 3' from them.

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rast

Discussion Starter · #7 · Jun 25, 2009

dogsoldier13 said:
your lucky though,elephants got my last hive,i had to bring in some africanized bees to keep the elephants out of my apiary.now theres a zebra problem,oh well,win some and lose some,good luck

Must have been Indian elephants, the AHB's won't bother African elephants. That's why they haven't run the zebras off. Use tigers from India to get rid of the zebras, and then the AHB's will run the tigers off. Let me know how you get rid of the AHB's after you got all the varmits run off.

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rast

Discussion Starter · #9 · Jun 26, 2009

db_land said:
Hey rast,
Were the ants after the bees (protein) or after honey (carbos) or both? I've got some big red ants near some hives that will attack me while I'm working a hive, but don't seem interested in the bees.

I don't know, I am really more inclined to think it was just a dry place to live. I now remember I had them nest in the empty side of a divided 6 frame hive last year. Scorched em with my propane torch and never saw them again. That hive is now 3 mediums and a shallow and was used for pollinating some vegtable gardens this spring. As I also said, they layed in the comb of a deadout last year.

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