I opened my hive last week to find the entire colony dead from a wax moth infestation. This is only my second year in beekeeping so I'm not sure what to do from here. There were the tell tale empty moth cocoons, a lot of the comb was destroyed and had white flakes all through it. The webbing was mostly all at the bottom and on the bottom board but there was definitely a lot of it. At first I suspected that AFB had weakened the hive, making it vulnerable to the wax moth, but I have investigated the remains and don't think that is the case. There was no foul smell and no ropiness when I punctured the sealed cells with a stick. There is still a lot of honey and comb that was not destroyed. Probably 10 frames totally destroyed and 10 that seem quite in tact. I have cleaned out the dead bees and scraped out all the moth webbing and cocoons. There remains a small amount of maybe 50-100 live bees. I'm not sure what they're doing, I watched them for a while yesterday and some of them go in and out of the cells, both the white flakey ones and the healthy looking ones. The others are in a cluster on one of the frames.
So here's my questions. Do I scrape all the damaged looking frames down and re-use them? Do I leave the un-damaged looking frames in the hive for re-use? What do I do with the remaining bees? Can I repopulated this hive with a swarm at this point or do I need to get rid of the existing bees to do that? And would I put a swarm in with the existing honey/frames/comb? Would the remaining bees rebuild if I got a new queen?
I'm sort of lost on my next steps here so any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you!
Anne
So here's my questions. Do I scrape all the damaged looking frames down and re-use them? Do I leave the un-damaged looking frames in the hive for re-use? What do I do with the remaining bees? Can I repopulated this hive with a swarm at this point or do I need to get rid of the existing bees to do that? And would I put a swarm in with the existing honey/frames/comb? Would the remaining bees rebuild if I got a new queen?
I'm sort of lost on my next steps here so any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you!
Anne