One of my hives has died

tillie · February 28, 2007, 04:15:35 PM

I'm so sad :( I went into my hives today and one of them was full of dead bees. At the end of the fall, the hive included a deep with brood frame, a medium with honey supers, and a shallow with honey left from the summer.

Today the hive looks as if the bees starved. The remaining bees (dead) were clustered on either side of two shallow super frames, heads deep into cells. In the medium below there were four full frames of honey. I took every frame out of all of the supers and examined each one. There was no evidence of any recent brood, no capped cells, nothing to indicate life in the hive.

I'm wondering if my queen died some time over the winter and the remaining bees just sort of dwindled down until the cluster finally died of starvation. It hasn't been very cold in Atlanta this winter although we were in the 20s every night about two weeks ago, but today and all this week we've had highs in the 70s and lows in the 30s.

Here are some pictures of what I found:

One side of the cluster:

The other side of the cluster:

How the brood frames looked:

There were bees flying in and out of this hive as recently as last week. I feel like a failure that I didn't know they were without a queen and/or hungry.....

Dead bees on the SBB:

Distressed in Atlanta,

Linda T :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'(

pdmattox · February 28, 2007, 05:46:25 PM

Tillie, sorry for your loss. Maybe you can borrow some brood frames from your other hive to start up the other one. good luck.

Understudy · February 28, 2007, 07:50:31 PM

Wow, I find this shocking. I saw bees going in and out of those hives when I was there.

It looks like you lost the queen and they didn't have success at making another one.

I would consolidate down and add some brood from the other hive. If you can order a queen. You can give the bees a chance to make another queen with the brood frame but it takes 30 days from hatch to laying eggs and the bees can dwindle down dramatically in that time. So you may have to add a second brood frame to sustain it over the time it takes. And that is if it takes.

Sincerely,
Brendhan

Michael Bush · February 28, 2007, 07:51:36 PM

Was there a tray in the bottom? I'd be looking for Varroa and other signs of problems. But the bees are on empty comb. They look like they "cold starved" where they are not in contact with any stores and the cold kept them from moving.

tillie · February 28, 2007, 08:09:02 PM

I do think they "cold starved" and that there probably hasn't been a queen for some time.

I want to know what I should have done differently. The hive had a bottle of sugar syrup in it that was 2:1 and was
empty but with sugar crystals all around on the top of the frame and there were four frames of honey I guess too far
away for them to get to it. I thought it was too cold last week to check the state of the sugar syrup and I could still see some dripped on the ground under the hive so I didn't think it was empty.....

I also looked at all the dead bees and saw no deformed wings although I'm sure there are other ways that varroa kills.

Linda T

Michael Bush · February 28, 2007, 10:11:06 PM

>I want to know what I should have done differently.

Probably nothing. Sometimes the bees get stuck trying to decide which way to go. Sometimes they get stuck because they made a decision to rear brood and a cold snap forced them to stay on the brood to keep it warm and they couldn't get to stores.

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesdecisions.htm

tillie · February 28, 2007, 10:15:14 PM

We certainly have had strange weather this winter - a week of 70 degree weather when the red maple started blooming about 3 weeks earlier than usual followed by freezing temps with 20 degree nights for another week and now warm weather again.....

I'm trying not to feel like a bad beekeeper. I have tried so hard to do it right, but I think I learn when stuff like this happens. It probably would have been better to open the hive on one of those cold days to add more sugar syrup or to see if they were still going OK. Bees were going in and out of both hives when Understudy visited last Saturday, but the ones in my "alive" hive were carrying pollen for the new baby bees and the ones entering the "dead" hive were not.

Is it OK to feed the four frames of honey from the dead hive to the live one?

Linda T

Jerrymac · February 28, 2007, 10:18:55 PM

Are you sure the dead hive wasn't being robbed out at that time? Perhaps they were already dead.

pdmattox · February 28, 2007, 10:20:00 PM

Quote from: tillie on February 28, 2007, 10:15:14 PM

Bees were going in and out of both hives when Understudy visited last Saturday, but the ones in my "alive" hive were carrying pollen for the new baby bees and the ones entering the "dead" hive were not.

Is it OK to feed the four frames of honey from the dead hive to the live one?

Linda T

Observing what is coming in and out is definately a good way to tell what is happening inside.

I would think it would be ok to feed the honey back.

tillie · February 28, 2007, 10:38:36 PM

Jerry, your idea that they were dead for a while is probably right. I'll bet that they died during the 20 degree week a couple of weeks ago and that they were as you suggested robbing bees from the other hive who were going in to get the stores from the dead hive - Now that I think about it, since I can see the hives while I eat meals, there has been a strange hesitancy about the bees entering the "dead" hive.

Last year that hive (the one that died) was always less active than the second hive - so I didn't think much about the sort of hesitant behavior I noticed last week......The hive that died was the best honey producer of the two....boo hoo.

I have felt so sad all afternoon since I opened the hives during a two hour break from work in the middle of the day.

:'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'(Linda T

Cindi · February 28, 2007, 11:55:45 PM

Linda, awe, I feel for you. I know your grief and it is a hard one to bear. I had built my colonies up to 10 last year. And lost 8, and am down to 2, I am not even sure if they will make it, but I am giving it my best shot to bring them through. This does cause deep sadness and a feeling of failure, but girl, press on, you will become a great beekeeper in due time.

This was my experience put in short version. I had brought two of my colonies through winter last year really well. They were doing awesome (I had lost 1 over the last winter). I made some nucs with these 2 colonies, bought 4 packages, caught two swarms and by the middle of the summmer had built them up to 10.

In retrospect, I see the many mistakes that I made last year, and as you said, Linda, learning by mistake is probably the best teacher in the world. I know the mistakes I made and I am correcting them for this year coming up. This year my focus is on making really strong colonies to go through winter and then next year I will focus on honey. So this year will be my building up year. If I get honey this year, that is good, but I am not focusing on that, it is strong, strong, HEALTHY, low varroa mite level bee colonies. My agenda and I am going to work hard at it.

Linda, best of days. Regards. Cindi