Pages for Bee Information

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Woe is Bee

I'm hanging crepe in my beeyard. I sat eating breakfast this morning and thought, "Oh, my, there are no bees coming in and out of Proteus!" I had about 30 minutes before I absolutely had to leave for work, so I threw on my bee stuff and went out to the hive. I opened it to find to my dismay that there were only the few bees in the picture below. So sad.


I guess the queen must have died some time ago and they have been dwindling but I have been very busy and not paying good enough attention. I haven't looked in the brood box in several months. I can imagine someone would look in this bee-less hive and say COLONY COLLAPSE - but I know it's beekeeper neglect.



When I pulled the frame only these few bees were on it and there was one other frame with about as many. The hive was infested with wax moth junk (see below). I decided to try to rescue the few bees left when I got home tonight by combining them with another hive, but there were only a few bees left when I got home, so I did nothing.


I also opened Proteus Bee to find absolutely no bees. When I moved it last weekend, I probably was moving a hive full of robbing bees.

So now I have two hives and will be feeding them like mad between now and fall.
The only good news was that the hive had a SHB trap in it that was filled with dead SHBs.
Posted by Picasa

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous12:19 AM

    Why didn't the bees in your empty hives attempt to make another queen? Was there any evidence of queen cells? Do you think there was a disease factor? Sorry about your hives. I enjoy your blog and have recommended it to many people

    ReplyDelete
  2. I haven't examined the frames - didn't have time today. We are in a dearth and we have a shortage of 17 inches of rainfall this summer - I expect that contributed. I did see a queen cell in this hive earlier in the summer, but I expect they tried to make a queen and failed....or she never returned from mating....or something else. I'll report when I really examine the frames. Mostly what I saw at first glance were wax moth worms and cocoons.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hello Linda - sorry to hear about your loss. I to enjoy your blog and pop in most days !
    I have started posting again on my blog, my bees out and about after a fairly wet winter.

    ReplyDelete