Kelly Philip

Thank you, thats really good to know. I wont have to worry so much about them then. I will look into getting some for the spring. Are they gentle bees?

I apologize for my bad spelling but I'm typing on my phone and it keeps changing things around. 😠

These are just really clever wasps. I've had 4 different kinds of wasp traps set up. The first one was a bag that you add water to. After a week, I found a honey bee in it. I took that one down and Mae 2 of my own from pop bottles. One had hotdogs and jam. They wouldn't go near it. The other had Pepsi left in the bottom of it and they haven't as much as sniffed at it. I bought one of those glass ones and put apple cider vinegar and sugar and salt in it and haven't caught any.
I made a soapy solution and sprayed 5 or six nests in the evening and the next day, they are back but now I don't know where their nests are. It's very frustrating. I carry my electric swatter with me at all times when I'm in the back tard and I go to the garden where they like to congregate on my vegetables and carefully get them when they are a safe distance from any honey bees. Those things are so prolific that the next day, there are at least as many. I've never seen anything like this before. It finally rained yesterday so that may have made a difference for a while but when the sun came out, so did the wasps. Something got the bees all excited. I'm not sure if it was just because they were cooped up in the hive all morning g dye to the rain, or if the wasps were attacking but they were all over the yard and especially around their entrance. It seemed like they wee upset so I didn't get too close to find out what was going on. So far I haven't been stung and it's been over a month since we got them. We've been checking inside the hive once a week to see how much progress they've made and if they need another box. Last week we added another box because they only had 1.5 frames left to fill in the first box. We will try changing to a bottom board today but I'm worried about disturbing them too much.

My bees flock to my garden to get the water off the lettuce. Unfortunately, there are even more wasps than bees there. We have killed so many wasps but it doesn't seem to make any difference. The next day there seems to be more than what we killed.
I put out a big bassin with rocks for the bees to stand on as they get their drink but they won't go to it. I picked up a nice water fountain from my mom and put rocks in it but they don't like it. The wasps have been there though. I put a small pond in with Lilly pads for them to drink from but they won't go to anything but my lettuce. I hate to use my lettuce since it's their water source.

The only treatment so far has been the tea tree oil. I haven't seen as many crawling bees lately so maybe it's helping. I'll see what I find with the screened bottom board before I do anything else.

I started with a 4 frame nuc. I live in British Columbia Canada. It's very hot here in the summer. We nearly reached 40°. We actually just examined a crawling bee and found it had a deformed wing and a verro mite. My son picked the mite off and examined it under the microscope. He put a toothpick with tea tree oil on it up to the mite and some tiny organisms jumped off of the mite. I don't know what those were.
We both a screened bottom board which we will put on tomorrow.

It's supposed to help with mites. Every day I find at least 5 or so that do that. When I looked into why, mites came up. I watched some videos on YouTube and it sounds that's what they have. The symptoms seem to be the same for tracheal and voroa mites from what I've read. Either way, the tee tree oil should help I think. We only got this hive as a 4 frame nuc in mid July so these bees probably have a lot of work to do before winter so it might help them build up by then as well.

Thanks for replying. They are doing a brilliant job bringing in pollen.They probably don't need the sugar water. I was only giving it to them as a way of administering the tea tree oil. My worry is about the bees that are crawling aimlessly through the grass. Does that mean they have mites? We only have one hive and would be sad if we lost it. 🐝

I'm pretty sure that the black bee that went running (limping) from the hive is a mason bee or something. My guess is that it was caught robbing and was fleeing the scene. I changed the entrance reducer to the smaller setting to keep the wasps and robbers out. The bees were in a big commotion over that change. They finally settled down though. I found another wasp munching on a bee under the table and killed it with my electric swatter. My son killed at least 20 wasps in my garden. Let's hope they stop multiplying now.
I would still love some input about the sugar syrup I gave them. I hope I didn't put too much tea tree oil in it.

I was sitting in my back yard watching the bees and saw a few strange things. First of all, a wasp walked right into the hive. The bees didn't even try to stop it. Secondly, a few hours later, I saw a bee pulling a white thing across the table that the hive is on. I realized on closer inspection that the white thing is actually a developing bee. It was still wet. I never saw how it got onto the table. A short time later, I saw a bee that looked black and had a paralyzed leg, run as best as it could, from the hive and right off the table.

I've only had this hive for a month and have no experience with bees until now. I don't know what to do. I've been guarding the bees from the wasps with an electric fly bat since the wasps won't go into the traps. I have seen some wasps eating my bees and I can't do anything about it unless I'm constantly guarding them.

I have seen quite a few bees walking around in the grass near the hive and I've seen some start convulssing until they die. I gave them a jar of sugar water with tea tree oil in it today to see if that will help.

The mixture I made up was a quart of 1:1 sugar water blended in the vitamix with about 10 drops of tea tree oil. The bees seem to be enjoying it. Any other suggestions??