[trottet1]

On april 11, I installed 4 packages. 3 seem to be ok. This one hive, the bees are clustered up in the feeder and not moving from that spot. One other hive was doing this as well, but upon my 9 day first inspection I noticed that that one was at least doing what it was supposed to be doing. Now the hive that is now dying, upon that same inspection, I noticed that no work was being done at all and there were zero bees on the frames. They were and are all just huddled up in the feeder, not even touching the syrup. I pretty much have written this hive off as dead and I am ok with it. The other 3 are drawing out frames and bringing in pollen. So what do I do with this hive? there are still bees alive in the feeder. Do I give it the benefit of the doubt and leave them be until it totally dies? Im not sure I want to combine them with the other hives, in case there is something wrong with them. I will add, that the syrup has white stuff floating in it and some of the bees crawling around looks like they have white specks all over them too.

any thoughts on this?
todd

 

[Zbee]

Do you see any comb being built in the feeder? Was there anything particularly wrong with the package that has not taken off - like an inordinate amount of dead bees? Do you see a mass of bees dead around that hive and/or inside? Queen released OK? Can they come and go from the hive - are they? Just trying to get a feel for why you believe its a dying hive.

Likely if you got the packages from the same place, they are all mixed in together from hives at the source. So any particular disease would likely be shared already.

 

[trottet1]

Yes, there is a little piece of comb built in the feeder. Most of the bees are dead. They were laying ontop of the frames. Some were very lethargic crawling on the pile of dead bees. No bees come or go. I direct released all the queens. So once I hived them, I didnt open the hives for 9 days other than to fill feeders.

 

[WLC]

If there are no eggs/larvae present, then the queen may be dead or a dud.

You could always take a frame of eggs/brood from one of your other hives, and put it in the problem hive.

I would also remove the feeder and dump its contents, clean/rinse it well, and then refill it with fresh 1:1 syrup.

Could have been a bad batch.

 

[Zbee]

Ouch, really sorry to hear that. Assuming the bees were in good health when they arrived and they died en masse like that over a few days, what changed? Was the woodwork new or treated with something different - perhaps what was used to seal the feeder? Did they receive the same syrup as the rest from the same batch?

 

[trottet1]

Everything was the same. All hives built and painted at same time as well as feeders. The sugar water was the same batch. Maybe leaning towards dead queen as stated above. I don't want to take any resources from the other hives as they are brand new. My only hive from last year came out of winter a bit weak so I'm pampering that one as well. I feel bad about writting this hive off, but I don't want to jeopordize my existing weak hives.

Thanks for your thoughts on this