Lost a hive

[rober]

since the weather is in the 60's i checked the hives. the hive that i considered my strongest is dead. there may have been 20 live bees.
they were low on sores but not out. my other 4 hives are fine. i will start feeding them today. so now what do i do with the frames? do you remove the foundation & start over? or-if i put these frames in another hive or add them to a new hive from a nuc will the bees clean them out? & if i keep them til spring how do i store them?

[mikecva]

What type of frames, are they full, is one of the 20 the queen and any idea why they are dead? I would freeze the brood frames and the honey frames if you have not been able to determine the CoD. On a nice day like today I would put the honey frames in another hive after freezing them.   -Mike

[rober]

they are wood frames. there's not much honey left. there are a lot of dead bees head first in the comb which would indicate that they starved. most of the honey is in the outer frames. they probably did not break cluster to get to that honey. my concern with the comb is all the dead bbes that are in it. in warmer weather i'd add them to another hive & let the bees clean them. i guess cleaning them is the way to go.

[rober]

i took that hive apart yesterday. there was still a godd 10-15 lbs of honey in the outer frames. it's been warm enough that the bees could have broken the cluster to get to. the bees themselves appear to normal with no deformities. if the queen died at this time of year would that cause the rest to die also?

[AliciaH]

I don't think so.  When losing a queen with no hope of raising a new one (or no population to get the work done, for that matter), they just become sort of listless.  There are no pheramones to drive them and they pretty much just dwindle away.  At least, that's been my experience.

I'd freeze the frames and feed them to the hive of my choice that needs the food.  Otherwise, if you leave them, they'll get robbed out.  Which is okay, too, if you don't need the food to go to a particular hive.

Sorry they didn't make it...  :'(

[rober]

i'm going to shake out the dead bees, freeze the frames, use them to restart the hive either from a split or a nuc this spring. my other 4 hives are still heavy & when i looked yesterday there was a lot of honey left in the frames. to play it safe tho i fed 3 hives. the 4th does not have as many bees ( but does have enough bees ) & is heavily laden with honey. i also filled their water pans since a lot them have been hitting the water. i have some empty buckets near the house & they have been getting rainwater from them as well. when i took the hive apart i brushed all the dead bees into a wheelbarrow so i could check them out. as i said they looked normal. i did not find the queen. they may have discarded her during house cleaning.