So you’ve stumbled upon an abandoned beehive in your apiary. It’s like finding an empty house – kind of creepy and mysterious. As a beekeeper, discovering a dead or neglected hive can be disheartening. But don’t fret, my friend! With this guide, you’ll learn how to clean up and reuse abandoned beehives to house healthy, buzzing colonies again.
Contents
Why Beehives Get Abandoned
Before we dive into cleanup, let’s explore why hives become abandoned in the first place. An abandoned beehive could mean the colony died off or straight-up fled their home. Neither situation is ideal, but identifying the root cause can help prevent it from happening to other hives.
Diseases and Pests
Sick hives don’t make happy homes. Diseases like American foulbrood, chalkbrood, and nosema can plague a colony and cause mass fatalities. Pests like varroa mites and hive beetles also wreak havoc, infesting hives with larvae that damage comb. Spotting and treating these infestations early is key to saving the hive. In severe cases, the bees sadly succumb to the illness and die off.
Starvation
Bees need food through winter and dearth periods to survive. If their honey stores run out, they’re totally reliant on their beekeeper to feed them. Without adequate nourishment, an entire colony can starve to death within a week. Always keep an eye on food levels in your hives to prevent this.
Pesticide Exposure
Chemical pesticides and herbicides are extremely toxic to bees. Even in small amounts, these poisons can infiltrate the hive and contaminate honey stores. If bees bring contaminated nectar and pollen back to the colony, it essentially poisons their own home.
Extreme Weather
Frigid winters or boiling summers tax bees. They work hard to maintain a consistent 95°F temperature in the hive’s core. But extreme highs and lows make it tough to regulate, and they risk abandonment. Ensure hives have proper insulation and ventilation to survive intense weather swings in your climate.
Colony Collapse
Sometimes, even strong hives up and vanish without a trace of dead bees. This phenomenon is known as Colony Collapse Disorder. Scientists don’t fully understand why bees abscond in this way. Theories point to disease, malnutrition, and environmental stress as potential triggers.
Performing a Hive Autopsy
When you discover an empty or dead hive, your first task is examining it for clues. Consider this your CSI investigation! Poke around the hive’s nooks and crannies looking for evidence of what went wrong. Here’s what to look for during your hive autopsy:
- Dead bees: Finding a large pile of dead bees likely means they succumbed to illness or starvation. Their bodies hold clues, so examine them closely.
- Pests: Keep an eye out for hive beetles, wax moths, and varroa mites, which leave behind damage and debris. Look for beetle larvae slime and webbed comb from moth infestations.
- Food stores: Check around for honey and pollen provisions. Empty combs indicate starvation was imminent.
- Queen issues: A dead queen or lack of eggs/brood can signify the colony was queenless.
- Comb condition: Old, damaged comb requires extensive repairs by bees, so they may have left due to inadequate living conditions.
- Odd behavior: Take note of robber bees or critters trying to invade the hive, which may have caused the bees to flee.
- Smells: Foul odors like vinegar or rot indicate disease. Make note of any weird scents inside the hive.
Documenting your autopsy findings helps determine if any diseases or pests are at play. That guides your cleanup protocol for reusing the equipment.
Cleaning An Abandoned Hive
Here comes the fun part – getting down and dirty with cleanup! How extensively you must scrub the hive depends on why it was abandoned. Follow these steps to get started:
Remove the Dead Bees
It may seem creepy, but you’ve got to get rid of any bee cadavers left behind. Deceased bees can attract pests and diseases. Grab a stiff brush or compressed air to dislodge them from comb. If frames are heavily infested, you may need to scrape off every last carcass by hand.
Pro tip: Place dead bee bodies in a sealed container buried away from hives. Their necrotic smell can attract more robbing insects if left out.
Keep or Toss the Comb?
Assessing if salvaging the comb is worth your effort comes next. Dark, brittle comb isn’t worth saving. But you can reuse lighter comb in good shape. Any diseased comb MUST go directly into a fire or sealed trash bag so infections don’t spread.
When salvaging comb, freeze frames for a few days before storing them to kill off wax moth eggs and hive beetle larvae. Stash them in an airtight tub away from light and pests until you’re ready to use them again.
Deep Clean the Woodenware
Used equipment deserves a proper deep cleanse. Take apart boxes and frames and give them a good scrub in hot, soapy water. For more sanitary measures, torch the wood with a flame or scorch it in the sun’s UV rays to demolish mold, fungi, and disease spores.
If the hive was infected with American foulbrood or other contagious diseases, play it safe and burn ALL the woodenware. Don’t contaminate your bee yard by reusing diseased equipment. Prevention is key!
Remove Excess Debris and Filth
Over time, propolis, burr comb, slime, and gunk build up in hives. Scrape and scour all the crud out until boxes and frames look shiny and new. Pay special attention to corners and crevices where grime loves to hide.
Give the boxes a light bleach or vinegar solution wash if pests infested the hive. This disinfects and deodorizes the equipment so it’s safe for reuse. Let everything completely dry before storage.
Be Thorough and Use Your Nose!
Your sniffer is one of the best tools for inspecting cleaned hives. Give boxes and frames a big whiff, especially joints and seams, to detect any lingering foul odors. If you catch a whiff of something nasty, reclean that spot and sniff again. Repeat until the stench is gone.
Reusing Abandoned Hives
Once you’ve completed your CSI-level hive examination and cleanup, that abandoned box is ready for bees again! Follow these steps to reuse the equipment in your apiary:
Make Repairs
Even in great shape, well-used hives need occasional repairs. Inspect for cracked, warped, or rotten wood that compromises structural integrity. Replace damaged frame parts, box joints, bottom boards, etc. to improve durability.
Install New Foundation
While you can recycle old comb, adding fresh wax foundation refreshes the hive’s interior like a new coat of paint. It gives bees a blank slate to build uniform comb that’s easier to inspect and harvest.
Paint Exteriors
Paint the outside of reused woodenware to protect it from weathering and extend its lifespan. Opt for exterior latex paint in light, bee-friendly colors like white, yellow, or green. Stay away from dark colors that may absorb excess heat in summer.
Delete Scents
Bees recognize their hives by scent. Before moving a new colony into repurposed equipment, erase any lingering smells to prevent confusion. Let boxes air out in direct sunlight then add a few drops of lemon grass or tea tree oil to mask previous odors.
Freeze Away Pests
To ensure you’re not also rehousing pests, freeze any reused equipment for a few days before use. This cold treatment kills wax moth eggs, hive beetle larvae, and other teeny freeloaders. Then store hives away from light and moisture until your new bees move in.
Monitor Closely
Keep close watch over your resurrected hive, especially during its first season. Perform frequent checkups to nip potential issues in the bud before they turn into huge problems. Be extra vigilant if equipment was previously infected by disease.
Preventing Future Hive Abandonment
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure when it comes to saving hives. Adopt these proactive measures to avoid dealing with abandoned equipment again:
Perform Routine Inspections
Regular hive checkups catch issues early when they’re most treatable. During warm months, inspect every 1-2 weeks for signs of disease, food shortages, and pest invasions. Pop those lids open to know what’s happening inside those buzzing boxes! Even quick peeks during winter are wise.
Ensure Adequate Food Stores
Well-fed bees thrive in their hives! Monitor honey and pollen levels closely, especially going into cold or dry seasons. Add supers or frames of honey to prevent starvation. Consider emergency feeders for times of extreme dearth. Fat, happy bees rarely abandon their home.
Requeen Promptly
A failing queen spells doom for a colony. She lays the eggs essential for population growth. Replace old or dying queens every 1-2 years with vigorous new laying queens to maintain a robust hive.
Control Pests
Use screened bottom boards, beetle traps, drone brood removal, powdered sugar dusting, and other integrated pest management tricks to keep varroa mites, wax moths, and hive beetles at bay. These parasites can destroy hives when left unchecked!
Provide Good Living Conditions
Bees work hard to maintain their hives. Make it easy on them by ensuring boxes are ventilated, insulated, and waterproof. Perform repairs promptly, rotate out old comb, and condense extra space as needed. Well-kept hives thrive!
Isolate Sick Hives
Quarantine any hives showing signs of contagious disease, like American and European foulbrood. Move them away from healthy hives to contain the spread. Sterilize your gloves, tools, and clothing thoroughly after working around sick colonies as well.
Ounce of prevention, pound of cure, right? Keeping your bees healthy, well-fed, and parasite-free is the best way to avoid dealing with abandoned hives down the road.
When to Throw In the Towel
Sometimes, despite your best detective work and TLC, a hive is too far gone to save. Here are signs it may be time to decommission a box for good:
- Pervasive American or European foulbrood infections
- Irreparable damage from pests like hive beetles
- Woodenware that’s rotted, warped, or moldy beyond repair
- Repeated abandonment by swarms, with no obvious cause
Reusing equipment contaminated by contagious diseases risks infecting your other colonies. And some wood just gets too old and decrepit to function properly in a hive anymore. In these cases, it’s best to burn the whole box and start fresh.
As a last ditch effort, you could try letting the hive sit empty for a full year before reusing it. This “bee sabbatical” allows any stubborn spores, fungi, or bacteria to die off over time. But staying vigilant for signs of contamination is still essential.
When a hive’s time comes, honor its service with a proper Viking funeral. Then mourn its loss, learn from it, and happily start again on the path of successful beekeeping!
Conclusion
Dealing with an abandoned beehive may seem daunting at first. But arming yourself with the right knowledge takes the sting out of the situation. Now you know how to perform autopsy investigations, deep clean equipment, and reuse components from neglected hives. Most importantly, you’re ready to take preventative action against losses in the future.
Here’s the buzz – abandoned hives are inconvenient setbacks, but not the end of the world for beekeepers. With some elbow grease and TLC, you can often get empty boxes thriving again. Now get out there and give those homeless honeybees a sweet new home! Just beeware of stragglers during cleanup. Get stung once, shame on them. Get stung twice, shame on you!
