January 15, 2014…I noticed a bunch of varroa mites on the bottom board. What was I going to do about it? “NOTHING!” (I was hoping the bees would know what to do)
A pile of dead bees that had been dumped out of the hive sometime earlier. This picture was taken from a video I shot in April. The dead bees had been there for a while, but I just couldn’t bring myself to photograph them. Too depressing. It’s possible these are all drones with deformed wing virus. I wish I had looked closer and examined them. I guess I should be happy that the other bees cleaned them out of the hive. It shows there are healthy bees that are cleaning up.
April 18, 2014…Box #3 is almost full, I’d better add a 4th box, which is what I did, but that was before the hive started to swarm. Compare the numbers to May 20th below.
May 10, 2014…The second swarm that came out of Warre2 in less than two weeks. I was able to transfer this swarm into a third Warre hive which is doing fine as of this date. (I just noticed some evidence of DWV bees being evicted in October ’14.)
May 20…Ten days after the second swarm, there’s only a few bees left in this the third box.
June 11…There’s been a small group of bees milling around the entrance for weeks. They don’t seem to have any ambition. Are they sick? Maybe.
July 14…Even fewer bees in July. That means (to me) only one thing. This hive is going nowhere. It’s all over except for the robbing.
July 14…this is a shot at the middle box showing very few bees. I’m just waiting for the robbing to start, but after tilting the hive, I realize there’s really no honey to rob.
I’ve seen a hive get robbed. It isn’t pretty. Once it starts there’s no stopping it. If it did get robbed, I was planning to take the new comb, freeze it (in case of wax moths), and save for future bait hives.
July and August came and went. No robbing took place. A swarm from my log hive presented itself on August 6. I contemplated combining it with this weak hive, but in the end, that swarm went into Bee Beard log hive of it’s own accord.
September 20…It’s possible there are a few more bees showing in this top box.
September 20…There are definitely more bees here in the middle box than in the July 14 view. The hive is building back up.
September 28…the activity around the hive has picked up dramatically. No more milling about. Bees are bringing in pollen.
Could this mean the hive has come back? Could it be that by taking this long brood break, the hive has reduced the varroa mite population naturally and now has started building up it’s numbers again?
A look through the observation windows in the back of the hive shows the top box full of empty comb, the middle box being full of bees and comb, and the bottom box with bees and old comb. The question is…why aren’t the bees working the empty comb in the top box?
A short video showing how fast the honeycomb built up. Luckily we are having an Indian summer into October. I’m athinking I won’t have to feed this hive this year as our winters are fairly mild and they have honey stores now.
Adventures in Natural Beekeeping 
Interesting. I didn’t know bees were so complicated.
Bees, especially honeybees are truly fascinating. It seems the more I learn about them, the more I realize I don’t know. 🙂
Bees really are fascinating and we are glad you are sharing with us.
There is a little spider in my guest bathtub. Teeny tiny. Don’t know what he eats. I blow on him/her and he retreats into the drain. I now haven’t the heart to wash him away. I enjoy his hide and seek game. 🙂
Spiders are fine when they are near the drain (and little). It’s when they are BIG and on the wall in the shower that I get freaked out…especially the jumping spiders. 🙂
I was in the bathroom this morning and didn’t see my friend. Seems my husband found out about our relationship and it freaked him out. 😦
I am sure there will be another one in some corner.
A jealous husband washes the relationship down the drain. 🙂
This is so interesting! So, by leaving it all up to nature’s own remedies, the hive apparently healed itself? My hubby and I attended a workshop on bees last year at the National Heirloom Expo, given by an organic/natural beekeeper. He said that our problem with the varroa mite is actually because of our own intervention, and that if left alone, honeybees will actually be able to develop a resistance to the mite. Maybe that’s what happened in your hive? Or, maybe it’s that one of your neighbors sprayed pesticide last fall/early spring, and killed most of the bees, but then the ones that survived tended to the already laid larvae, and those eventually built numbers back up? We are getting our bees this next spring – can’t wait!!! Hopefully we will have success, but reading blog posts such as yours gives us a lot of information for problems that may arrise – thanks!
I’d like to think that the colony collective figured that to combat the varroa mite the queen should hold back on egg laying. (The varroa mites develop in the brood) No brood (possibly) no varroa. Well it’s probably not that simple. They were suffering from some Deformed Wing Virus which many people think comes from varroa mites or chilled brood. I guess the jury is still out, but it was surprising to me to see the number of bees build up, especially after such a long time. They were flying vigorously again today. I’ll be posting a video.
Glad to hear the bees are making a recovery, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that our sick hive will spring back too particularly as now we really can’t do much about it! Beautiful pics of natural comb. Have you had any problem with wasps? We had lots around this weekend.
We haven’t been bothered by wasps around the hive. They get on the bamboo though, but I’m not panicking like I did last year. They are just licking the fiber off for their paper nests. Wasps around bee hives are very much a different matter though. They finished off my very first hive. It was heartbreaking to watch.
Fantastic work! It looks amazing. We have been attracting lots more bees to the garden since we started planting flowers amongst the veggies. Wish we had room for a hive.
You would love it. It really doesn’t take much room. I’ve seen small back yards in the city with about 8 to 10 hives. We love to see the abundant life. Thanks for planting flowers among the veggies. 🙂
Amazing. Someone at a conference once asked a speaker whether bees could learn (on their own or by specific breeding) to break brood cycle to knock back Varroa. The speaker did not think that was very likely.
Bees have been around millions of years before man. To think that they are dependent on us is hubristic.
I checked the bottom board again this evening to find NO varroa mites. IMHO people who treat their hives to kill back varroa are doing beekeeping a disservice. The mites will develop a resistance and the bees will not learn to adapt. When I look at other people’s bees I’m struck with how large they are. My bees build their own natural comb. I’m not using any foundation, so the bees determine the cell size. The smaller the cell size, the smaller the bees. Smaller bees develop slightly faster possibly cutting the time for varroa development. Anyway it’s worth a try and so far it’s working out.
This is a fascinating study…I completely agree with your assertion that killing the varroa mites will not serve the bee community in the long term. Kudos to you for your truly natural bee keeping!
Thank you Mandalaone, I was very happy that the bees proved they could heal themselves without my intervention. Maybe by giving them more time to ‘sort things out themselves’ we would do more good than going for the quick fix.
This was written by a longtime beekeeper in Great Britain. Barbara (of biobees.com) has given me permission to quote her…
“What you are describing with your bees is something that I experience a lot with my established colonies. They swarm multiple times and then stagnate and look like they are left queenless. Only a few bees and there is very little activity and no brood and this goes on for weeks and weeks. I call it the holiday period. There is no need to bust a gut like the swarms do because they have plenty of empty comb to utilise and usually the established colonies have sufficient stores even after the swarms have filled their bellies and left. It has happened several years in a row now when I have pretty much given up on them and then suddenly they start to pick up and just take off.
I must confess I have not noticed DWV in these colonies…. it is the ones that don’t swarm that suffer that, but I’m pretty sure this long stagnant phase is what helps them to reduce their varroa population to a manageable level. I don’t monitor varroa and only assess it from what I see during the odd inspection that I carry out, so I can’t back up my thoughts with any data.
I love watching the progress of your hives… it’s fascinating!