Hive lost...

2103 Views 10 Replies 7 Participants Last post by honeydreams, Mar 21, 2010

chandler

Discussion Starter · #1 · Mar 21, 2010

Well, I thought I was going to come out of my first season smelling like a rose. No such luck...

Today I decided to do an inspection of my one and only hive since I haven't opened it since October. When I last looked at it, the two deeps and the super was full of capped honey. Everything seemed in order. I hadn't feed them since May and their numbers grew quite quickly. Didn't notice anything was really wrong until I opened it.

What I found was the super was about half full of honey with a few hundred bees still in it. I chose today because it was in the low 70's and our fruit trees are in bloom and covered in bees. Took the super off and started digging into the first deep. No honey and no bees. Comb looks black and there is quite a bit of mold on the outside few frames. Few dead bees in the cells. Not looking good.... Took it off and started pulling frames from the bottom deep. No better. No honey and lots of mold. Got that deep off and found about 3 inches of dead and moldy bee carcases on the screened bottom board. There is all my bees...

Dumped out the dead bees and put everything back together. Immediately put my entry feeder on, although it's probably way too late to bother with that.... No queen found either..

Lesson learned is while some people can not feed or treat their bees, i feel that mine just wasn't established enough to take this step. Maybe later. I believe the mold is from poor circulation due to all the dead bees. I shall start checking this more frequently in the Winter as well.

I'm planning on getting another package and queen and trying it again. Any reason not to do this?

This site has been a great resource and I've learned quite a lot in my first year of beekeeping but I seem to always screw up my first go at things so this doesn't appear to be any different. Maybe next year will have much different results.

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walking bird

· Registered

Joined Mar 2, 2008

458 Posts

#4 · Mar 21, 2010

Without a queen and without queen cells (you didn't mention any) this hive's a goner; probably before you can get your package.

If you do get your package and there are still bees, you could take the 3 days to get the new queen established, and then do a newspaper combine, with the weak hive on top.

Or... let 'em die off. There may have been a disease, and you don't want to risk infecting a new hive. If it were me, I'd start fresh, let this hive perish, and thoroughly clean it. Depending on the condition of the comb, (you mentioned mold) I'd consider dumping that too.