[glangston]

Hello, I am a new beek in south GA. I got my hive at the beginning of this year. Everything seemed to be going great. Added a super at the end of March. Opened the top of hive this past Saturday and all seemed good. The hive was active with bees on the entrance. I did notice one SHB in the super. Today (Wednesday) there were a lot of dead bees outside the hive on the ground. When I say a lot, I mean prob a double hand full. There were dead bees on the entrance, some looked like larvae. Opened the hive up and the top box it was business as usual. It did not seem as populated as this past weekend. I cleaned the entrance to the hive and put that in a ziploc. Later inspection of the ziploc bag, I noticed it had a fowl odor.

Any ideas what may have happened? What can I do to try and save this hive?

 

[Threesons]

I had the same thing happen to my hive last year about this time. Still not sure what prompted them to eject the larvae, but I suspect it has something to do with SHB or wax moths. After a series of mistakes on my part and some bad luck, my hive was eventually wiped out by wax moths last fall. I had all but given up on beekeeping until I noticed this weekend that a wild swarm had taken up residence in my empty hive. Here's a link to a thread on the subject I joined in on last year that may have some info for you... https://www.beesource.com/threads/230734/

Hope this helps and good luck

 

[glangston]

I checked on the hive this morning and there were a 6 dead bees on the ground and 6 dead bees/larva on the entrance. I was expecting a lot worse, especially after what it looked like yesterday. Hopefully the worse is behind me and the hive will rebound. Just wish I knew what happened so I could be better prepared if this were to ever happen again. I will wait and see how they do today, maybe the hive will continue improving with time.

 

[megsearth]

I just got my package of bees about a month ago and the past few days I saw a few dead bees, but this morning there were about 20~ the hive is on a pallet and I noticed a bunch of dead bees under there as well. Is this clean up or is there something wrong? it's been rainy and in the 60's the past few days.

Thanks,

Megan