Absconding apideas

[Neils]

Checked through the apideas this afternoon and it looks lie three of them have absconded, combs drawn, they had food but not a bee in sight?

What did we do wrong?

[fatshark]

Overcrowded? In full sun? Or both? Do you place QE over the entrance once the queen in mated and laying?

[Jon]

The other possibility is that the bees left with the queen on a mating flight and failed to return. I have witnessed this several times.
But they definitely abscond if left in the sun.
Ours are set out in a totally shaded area under a mature Lime tree.

apideas-minnowburn.jpg

[Neils]

Full sun would be my guess then. Bugger, live and learn.

[Jon]

We use this site which is about 300 yards from the drone colonies as there is no shade at the other place.

if you find an empty apidea have a good look around for the contents as they wont be far away.
All you have to do is walk over with the apidea and retrieve the bees and queen.

[drumgerry]

One of my apideas absconded but thankfully I think because the queen larva hadn't developed properly and was dead in cell.

[Jon]

I put excluder strips over all my apideas with laying queens about 10 days ago.
I watched a couple try and abscond this afternoon but the bees came back as the queen could not get out.

The excluder is not a fail safe though.
I found another apidea which had a content of one bee, the queen, and she was near starvation point.
I rescued her and put her in an introduction cage to make up a nuc.
Sometimes the absconding bees just seem to disappear and sometimes they end up in another apidea which is then likely to abscond due to over population.

[prakel]

Yesterday I found what I initially thought to be a small, very small, cast but on reflection over night I'm now thinking that they may well be a gang of abscondees from an apidea or similar. Where were they? Living quite happily inside a miller feeder. I must have walked past them three times before even realizing that they were there.

[gavin]

Having had no absconding Apideas last year, this year I've seen several. Yesterday's, belonging to a forum member, left behind two worker bees, much of the fondant they were supplied with, some nice comb, a little pollen, and less than a day's worth of nicely laid eggs. I'd blame that particular paving slab, but a couple behind the shed did the same some weeks ago. Yesterday's were also stocked with different bees from the earlier ones.

[Jon]

Some apideas will still abscond even when you do everything right.
The temptation is to take the queen out and put her in an introduction cage as soon as you see eggs but if you do this she may well be rejected or superseded early.
30-35 days from emergence is the optimum time for introduction to a new colony. (Rhodes and Denny)
Some abscond almost as soon as the queen starts to lay whereas others are happy to pack out the apidea with bees and brood.
As a compromise, removing the queen after about 10 days when there is sealed brood and you can check the pattern is probably the best option.
It is really annoying to find an empty apidea which had a queen laying perfectly.

PS. the queen I found on her own in the post above was dead in the cage when I checked later so she must have been in bad shape.
I usually put 3 workers in the cage so maybe the bees in the nuc did not think she was worth feeding.