Only once have I witnessed a colony abscond.  I watched the vortex form and gain altitude as the bees poured out of the hive.    At first I thought it was a late season swarm (end of September), but it was a huge swarm which landed at the top of a semi dwarf yellow delicious apple tree in my back yard, not even 15 feet to the west the hive location.     I hived the "swarm" (or at least I thought it was a swarm at the time) into another set of hive boxes. 

Since it was late season with not much chance of a newly emerged queen getting properly mated, my intent was to go into the hive which swarmed, remove the queen cells and newspaper this swarm back into the original hive.

When I examined the hive which swarmed, it was totally vacant except for four small hive beetle traps crammed to the gills (I had just put in 4 new empty traps, a few weeks earlier) and adult SHB running all over the place.    Right or wrong , I think this was the reason for the bees to abscond.    I have read (do not remember where), the adult SHB brings in or creates a yeast which if there is enough of it will overwhelm/stress the bees with an odor which may cause them to abscond.

Back to absconded hive which I had recaptured and put into another complete empty hive (which had several frames of built out comb in it).   It stayed in that hive for a little over 1 day and then proceeded to "swarm" (actually abscond) again and this time they landed every bit of 25 to 30 feet up in the air on the end of a branch of a silver maple tree two houses to the west.   No way for me to get to them without a bucket truck which I did not have. 

They stayed there for close to 2 days and then departed for parts unknown (some suitable cavity elsewhere).  The bees were determined to vacate the locale.    

The other hives in the same yard did not have a problem.  They all have SHB, but those colonies kept the SHB in check.

Steve P


 Two words which should always never be used in beekeeping  ..... "always" and "never"

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