What happened?

[Sundog]

A few weeks ago, I checked on my hives and in one of them I noticed that the queen was laying up in the super.  This hive has two deep boxes for brood and a super, so I tossed on an excluder to stop her laying up top.  I have all the bees I want to raise at this time and if they swarm, it's okay by me.

A couple of days ago, I checked them again after what I thought was a couple of days of robbing (I did screen off the entrance as soon as I noticed the robbing), and found this?





The hive is still very strong, tons of bees and bit grouchy as usual, by comparison to the hive next to it.  Just wondering what happened.  Halloween?

[chux]

I wonder if that is the remains of drones? Hard for me to see, but some of those look like the heads of drones. Maybe the workers couldn't fit them through the excluder. Did your colonies start removing drones yet?

[BeeMaster2]

Looks like the drones were trying to get out. Were the heads facing up or down. I suspect down and you did not have a top entrance for them to get out of the super to mate.
Was there a frame with drone brood in the super?
Jim

[Sundog]

Heads were facing up and there was no top entrance per se, but somebody did chew a gap under the top screen.  I have screens over the inner top boards to keep out the other bugs.  Perhaps they were drones trying to get out.  Did not notice any brood up top, drone or otherwise.  I did see some headless bodies outside along with some smaller bodies so the drone theory is likely correct.  Other than the heads, my "big" hive was full of bees and very busy.  It has been a slow summer down here with all the rain we received.  Bees were coming home empty on many days, so I was relieved to find it robust.

My younger hive, started with eight frames cut down from an open air hive this summer, also seemed healthy and the bees were much calmer than the bees in the big hive.   They had packed the #1 and #10 slots with frameless comb attached to the top cover.  The side near the entrance had brood, the side away from the opening was full of honey.  I cut and hung the brood into a frame and traded the honey for a frame with foundation.  Noticed a couple of queen cells in the brood part I cut away so I will give them a supper before too long.