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I'm a new beekeeper in the Rocky mountains, ~9,000ft., zone 5a, I'm using my greenhouse as a sort of AZ hive by putting my Layens hive in it with southern entry. I'm foundationless, and I made several mistakes that cost me 3/4 of my new bees. First, got my package to early, had them inside for 2 days, but decided to install in about 50°F in my Layens hive outside(before I moved it to greenhouse), it was much colder at night, maybe 30°, and they had no comb or anything, when I got out there the next morning the bees were not moving, so I gave them some heat and put them in a swarm trap in my greenhouse.
They recovered, but 3/4 of them went into our raised beds in greenhouse, got wet and cold and died. I put any bees still alive back into trap and when the queen finally released from cage the next day, the ~1/4 of package of bees I had left in total seemed to abscond with her to the southeast corner of the greenhouse in cluster, thats when I decided to bring my Hive to the greenhouse and turn it into a kind of AZ hive and to keep the bees as warm as possible til it warms up, so I got my remaining cluster of bees into that hive. Now I have an open south entrance Layens/AZ hive with about 2500 bees and hopefully the queen. I never actually have seen the queen since she got out of the cage and the bees clustered in the corner of the greenhouse. I also added a queen excluder to keep the queen from using the entrance and prevent absconding...(see attachment for my layout)
...All seemed good when it warmed up for a couple days, the entrance activity seemed normal, but they didn't appear to be drinking any of the 1:1 syrup I put in a custom feeder inside the hive. Now yesterday and today, was colder again and weathery on and off, but its nice now but only 50°(warmer weather coming soon). Today, I just added a pollen patty to the hive and and peaked to see if they were building comb yet,... I couldn't see any comb, and the bees were clustered in the corner. and they still dont seem to be drinking the 1:1 syrup. I also found out that I should have had my bottom open screen closed, so i did that.(I have 2 small screens down there still for ventilation.)
Any advice on what to do next??? Why arent they building comb? Why arent they eating syrup? Is it just not warm enough yet? Thank you.
One other bit: Still have snow on ground in many places and no flowers out yet, at least not in immediate area of hive...
They recovered, but 3/4 of them went into our raised beds in greenhouse, got wet and cold and died. I put any bees still alive back into trap and when the queen finally released from cage the next day, the ~1/4 of package of bees I had left in total seemed to abscond with her to the southeast corner of the greenhouse in cluster, thats when I decided to bring my Hive to the greenhouse and turn it into a kind of AZ hive and to keep the bees as warm as possible til it warms up, so I got my remaining cluster of bees into that hive. Now I have an open south entrance Layens/AZ hive with about 2500 bees and hopefully the queen. I never actually have seen the queen since she got out of the cage and the bees clustered in the corner of the greenhouse. I also added a queen excluder to keep the queen from using the entrance and prevent absconding...(see attachment for my layout)
...All seemed good when it warmed up for a couple days, the entrance activity seemed normal, but they didn't appear to be drinking any of the 1:1 syrup I put in a custom feeder inside the hive. Now yesterday and today, was colder again and weathery on and off, but its nice now but only 50°(warmer weather coming soon). Today, I just added a pollen patty to the hive and and peaked to see if they were building comb yet,... I couldn't see any comb, and the bees were clustered in the corner. and they still dont seem to be drinking the 1:1 syrup. I also found out that I should have had my bottom open screen closed, so i did that.(I have 2 small screens down there still for ventilation.)
Any advice on what to do next??? Why arent they building comb? Why arent they eating syrup? Is it just not warm enough yet? Thank you.
One other bit: Still have snow on ground in many places and no flowers out yet, at least not in immediate area of hive...
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