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Finaly had a day over 35 today, did some quick inspections on my 5 hives. four are doing great, still mutiple frames of honey, lots of bees and today they are doing some cleansing flights. However, one hive is going bad.
It was my strongest hive going into winter (Italians), but now most all the bees are dead. There is a small pocket of bees but perhaps not more than 1000 total and dead ones everywhere. There were black 'dots' all over the top inner cover and frames. One of the frames was full of dead bees that were in the cells head down. There was capped honey in the frames 3 deep from the sidewall, as well as all the frames near the sidewalls are full. Say 5 full frames of honey and some pollen in the top box. But the center stores were mostly gone. I did not look at the bottom chamber.
I moved one frame of full honey next to the center cluster of bees and gave them some candy board.
Two questions.
It was a tough past 8 weeks - think it was just too cold for them to move the cluster and it mostly starved?
How many bees are needed for the hive to survive? I don't know If the queen is still alive, but I'm thinking that at this point there is too few to make it, and it is best to clean this hive up, save the honey and order an additional package of bees.
Looking for your thoughts
tks
It was my strongest hive going into winter (Italians), but now most all the bees are dead. There is a small pocket of bees but perhaps not more than 1000 total and dead ones everywhere. There were black 'dots' all over the top inner cover and frames. One of the frames was full of dead bees that were in the cells head down. There was capped honey in the frames 3 deep from the sidewall, as well as all the frames near the sidewalls are full. Say 5 full frames of honey and some pollen in the top box. But the center stores were mostly gone. I did not look at the bottom chamber.
I moved one frame of full honey next to the center cluster of bees and gave them some candy board.
Two questions.
It was a tough past 8 weeks - think it was just too cold for them to move the cluster and it mostly starved?
How many bees are needed for the hive to survive? I don't know If the queen is still alive, but I'm thinking that at this point there is too few to make it, and it is best to clean this hive up, save the honey and order an additional package of bees.
Looking for your thoughts
tks