One Down

By | March 5, 2012

So I’ve lost a hive. Coca is a deadout this winter. This was a Rossman package with its original queen.

The clean out showed about a 3-4″ wide strip of stores at the back of most frames in the second and third box. The problem seemed to be that the bees began to rear brood at the front end of a couple of frames in the third box. We had some cold spells, the bees refused to move to the back of the frames and abandon the brood, at which point the cluster just got smaller and smaller.

Took some pics, depressing, but will provide documentation of what happened later down the road.


All the bees you see in this picture are dead.


Classic heads-in starvation diagnosis.  Notice
the brood that was probably keeping the bees
from moving to the stores.

So there you have it. I’m not quite ready to call the remaining hives overwintered just yet, but each day that passes brings me closer to doing so. All hives except the nuc are now taking some fondant, with Sintra being very active and working on its second block. While the insulation is keeping me from pulling apart boxes and doing full inspections, it seems to be helping to keep the attic box warm enough that even on fairly cold days, meaning high 30s or low 40s, the bees can still be up in that box eating fondant which I think is a very good thing.


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