Wisdom needed: Newbie mistake: Super still on

[franktrujillo]

no wax moth evidence there only maybe a little robbing of the hive as it warmed up.

[Jamie D]

Tomorrow was the day I was planning on tearing it all down, my first day off since Thursday. (I may even hold a little bee funeral) I fear that doing this in the rain is probably not such a good idea. Any thoughts?

No matter when I do it, this will be well-documented, photos galore.

[Jamie D]

Oh- and there were robbers out there yesterday, nice & warm for them.

[psfred]

I would guess this is what happened to my first hive as well -- lack of stores going into winter. I also had some European Foul brood, but I suspect that was due to lack of stores and the resulting stress.

This year, take all that nice drawn comb and give your new bees a head start, and next August check for mites using a sugar roll or powdered sugar dusting. Treat if you have any significant numbers of mites, and put a protein patty on in September. Feed 2:1 syrup with a large capacity feeder (Boardman feeders are useless for this) until the hives are up to weight, meaning you cannot tip them from the rear with one hand because they weight too much.

You will get much better wintering -- that cluster was much too small to survive and they froze to death the first really cold snap.

Peter

[delber]

well if there were robbers, then there's a good chance that they'll have a swarm that you may be able to catch. You can always just close the entrance to stop robbing since the hive is dead anyway. You'll be able to see robbing if it has happened based upon the comb being bitten and little bits scattered throughout the comb. Your first picture I think the one with the marked queen has what I would say was robbing or some other thing going on due to the little bits of wax scattered around. This is where I thought wax moths or something. I cleaned up a hive last weekend (my climate is slightly colder than yours I believe) and when I brought the hive box home I had about 15 greater wax moths that I killed on the frames. Because I'm seeing it here I wouldn't be surprised if you had it there also and that dammage could result from them. I'm not sure of the stage of SHB there, but I'd definitely freeze the frames.