Ok we just opened the 2 hives AND......

[zzen01]

 :roll:   One of the made it through(Looks like about as many bee as are in a 3 lb pkg) we couldn't find the queen(should I re-queen or let 'em raise their own) AND the other one had an air gap and they all got cold and/or wet and they died( :'( ) . I will re-pkg that hive and start feeding syrup to the other. Does this sound like a good plan?

[zzen01]

me and the bees

[zzen01]

[zzen01]

Above pics....any comments...?

[iddee]

Pics look good and your plan sounds good.

[backyard warrior]

First question is how old is the queen in the hive usually after two years people requeen. Ill be honest with you if they over wintered successfully i would let them raise their own queen. Let them build up till you find swarms cells at that point move the old queen and open brood to a new location and they will hatch out a new queen.  Did you look through the brood nest for eggs or larva ??  If they made it through winter chances are good that you have a queen in there and you just cant find her.  Before id buy a queen id look long and hard for the queen survivor stock is what we all want  Chris

[T Beek]

zzen01:  Were there eggs or any open brood in the colony you wish to re-queen?  If so, you may get lucky and they'll requeen themselves (unless there is still one in there ;)).  If not, you'll need to do some more investigating.  Look for large numbers of drones (indicating queen failure but not neccessarily queen death) etc, which would make a combine more practical.

thomas

[zzen01]

We're not sure that there are any eggs. There's still some honey left, but didn't really see any larvae. Thinking maybe we need a queen?? She was put in there last year when we bought a package. This will be our third year of beekeeping. The first winter our bees were all gone. This is our second winter and we were excited to see any bees at all. The one hive has lots of bees, in the second one, the bees all died. :-( We'll get this right eventually!! We'll keep working on it! :-)

[T Beek]

If you saw no eggs or larvae besides being queenless they cannot raise their own queen.  No eggs also indicates no laying workers, a good thing.  Again, I'd look for drones v workers.  You may have to combine these bees or just dump them when your new bees arrive.

It sounds like a new queen "may" be in order ASAP, better hurry.  Let us know all know how it turns out.

thomas

[annette]

You have the fancy cooper top roof that I always wanted. Only thing is I need to place heavy bricks on top of mine because of raccoons in the area and can't do that on the slooping roof.

Good luck with the next hive.

Annette

[T Beek]

annette; you reminded me of a time when I worked at an area zoo and took care of the feeding, cleaning and basic management of over 200 indigenous (and farm) animals.  The raccoons (and the otters) would regularly body slam the cement blocks off their hootch's that I had just placed the night before, hilarious (until rainy/windy/snowy weather hits).  Thanks for the refresher :)

thomas

[annette]

The raccoons drive me crazy around here. They really make my inspections so much harder because I have to lift these really heavy concrete bricks (bigger than bricks actually) and they kill my back.

[T Beek]

I guess if I was having that much trouble with racoons I'd switch to straps instead of cement blocks.  Just a thought.

thomas