It was September 1999 ...
Then a friend of mine was almost panicked, saying that in the mantra of his house, bees smarm, and one not get out of there, fearing the bees will be stung by them.
I got a void hive and went to the spot!
I saw that it was a small swarm of at most 2 frames that was trying to catch in a slit of the mantra, but because the mantra was made of cement, the slit was not too large and many bees did not move in.
With a little smoke I took the swarm and put it relatively easily into the hive.
Unfortunately, this swarm day by day is shorter than I remember and at most 2 weeks it was finally lost ...
Also on October 26, 2011, a farmer informed me that he went to sprinkle his growing olives and on an olive tree he saw a ball of bees sitting on the branch as he said ...
Then I went and found it but the farmer seemed to have sprayed it with the olives and all the bees were dead under the olive, except for a handful that there was no need to try to gather.
Finally, in August 2013, another farmer saw a swarm sitting in a Pears and came and he advised me to take it.
But because until it came to me some hours had passed, when I arrived the swarm was already gone!
All this if April or May there would not be even a reference.
What happens when we have cases of smarms at the end of summer and autumn?
Then this phenomenon in beekeeping is called desolation and I will explain what is happening.
As we know from mid-summer in most regions there are not many flowers.
In the absence of flowers, pollen and nectar reduce their egg beequeens dramatically ...
Many times the honeycombs dry in the hive and the flock is hungry, and with no choice, it is engaged in looting of nearby and mostly weak bees.
This situation becomes suffocating for the small flock, and is forced to leave its hive to move to another area in the hope of resting there, but also to find more flowers.
Moreover, with the reduction of the birth of the queens and the Larvae, all the The Varroa population in birds is now growing in bees and drinking their blood.
And we are talking about a lot of varroa, which gradually decimates the bees.
Instinctively then the flock leaves its nest looking for a new hive ...
This does not do it for Varroa, which is a relatively new enemy, and our bees have not yet acquired mechanisms to deal with it, but they do it with instinct as I said, as they would for the other diseases ...
For example, Ascosphaera Apis is in the autumn, American sepsis and / or nosema Apis.
Other reasons that will lead the cluster to abandon are the continuous attacks of the wasp and as the attacks of Aherontia that peak in the autumn and these.
For all the above reasons, or for each one separately the flock can completely abandon its hive leaving only empty honeycombs, and this phenomenon is called desertification !!!
And because they are usually troubled honeybees, they can not be too large, so in most cases they are from 1 to 4 population frames.
The reason I write this article is because many beekeepers in the autumn months see or gather such swarms and do not know the dangers they can hide.
Why well if the swarm has gone away due to wasps, or even the reason of a varroa ...
But what if this flock destitute because of some disease, and how does the beekeeper manage it?
These simple questions will answer the current article and I think it is important for young people, especially beekeepers, to know the clusters to increase their bees, the moves they have to make.
First of all, it is clear that September and October have no smarm.
All these autumn flocks, which are not a few, should be considered as flocks of desertion.
Clearly, we have to collect them, but it is good that they should go into hives with not built honeycombs, and go away from our apiary or generally away from other beehives until they are healthy and there is no risk of transmitting us disease.
If we find that he has a very vorroa, then we must fight him immediately before the queen gives birth, and the varroa hides in larvae.
By dealing with Varroa, the flock will be relieved immediately if that was the reason he was devastated.
What before I told you that in such a swarm it would be good to give him uncreated honeycombs.
We must do this to neutralize the possibility of American sepsis.
When we give him ungainted honeycombs to the swarm they will be forced to consume any honey stocks in their honey bees to build their new honeycombs.
Along with this, the spores of the disease will also emerge, and as they are planted with the wax candles they will be inactivated and the beehive will be cured.
But it is a prerequisite for this to happen, not to feed the swarm, but to let it grow for several days to consume any contaminated honey that bees have in their mouths.
If we now assume that a sick bee American sepsis deprived of instinct to avoid illness, think about what will happen ...
This in the wild goes away to go to some tree trunk ...
There he is forced to build new honeycombs, and thus neutralizes the spores of the disease and hence heals himself.
That's how his choice is to desert, and that's why nature has given the bees the instinctive movement of desertion.
But if the man intervenes, catch the flock and put it in a beehive with built honeycombs, then this honeybee will not have any luck, it will gradually be lost and can spread its disease to other nearby beehives or apiary.
That is why today's announcement to everyone but especially to the young beekeepers says that if we see a flock last summer or autumn, we catch it but we give it candles and we quarantine it away from our apiary and other beehives untilwe are sure it is healthy.
That's how things are with the autumn flocks, I write it all though I know the sweetness that leaves the beekeeper the grasp of an unexpected swarm.
MELISSOCOSMOS
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