Guilfordbeekeepers.org

Looking for advice. I had two very strong hives going into the winter, treated for mites, being a 1st year bee keeper I thought everything was good. Now both hives are dead, no idea why, very frustrated and I am not sure what to do next. I have ten frame hives with supers and they are packed with honey. I will start again with packages in the spring but not sure what to do for the next few months. I am afraid of unwanted pest and such.

Any help is much appreciated.

You may want to give Don Hopkins a call. He is the bee inspector for our area. If you have significant numbers of dead bees that are still fairly fresh, you may also want to collect samples for him. You can google his contact information and hopefully, instructions for collecting samples through the NC Department of Agriculture site.

You are not alone. I am aware of hives that were below threshold for treatments in late August that are now dead outs. One I had that was over threshold and that I delayed too long to treat crashed and died despite a treatment. As long as weather stays generally cold and your frames are not stored in warm areas, you should not have issues with wax moths & small hive beetles. If storing the frames and equipment out doors, you may want mouse guards for the entrances. I am down a couple of freezers at this point, but will probably be purchasing another large chest freezer in the near future. I like being able to store comb that has pollen, nectar, or honey OR that is open but has had brood in it in the freezer. This protects the comb from wax moth and SHB damage and I have not had problems with stored honey frames crystallizing with the very low temperatures. Frames with pollen will go bad at warm temperatures. If the pollen frames are enclosed in containers at room temperatures to "protect" them, you may wind up with fermented pollen and lots of fungus growth on the comb. You may want to read about paramoth (NOT commercial moth balls). I haven't used it yet, but I have purchased some and will probably use it to protect comb (NOT eating honey combs) from wax moth damage. The comb will need to be aired out per label instructions before being used again.

If your honey is from nectar, you may want to extract some for your personal consumption. If it contains sugar water from feeding bees, those frames can be given back to your bees as long as the bees did not die because of a persistent problem like AFB (unlikely) or some other real problems. Don Hopkins can give you information/ answers.

You may want to go ahead and order bees now. I got Keith's (Beez Needz) e mail that his are selling quickly, and with the closing of Brushy Mountain Bee Farm, there may not be as many packages being brought into North Carolina this year.

Thanks for the information Rob. I am a very competitive person, so I really hate to fail and losing two hives feels like failure. I have two more packages on order with Keith and will try again in the Spring.

Don't look at it as failure. Look at it as heartbreaking! This is agriculture, so you can do everything right and still get kicked in the gut. If I have made a mistake and lost a hive, I try and learn from it, but it really gets frustrating when you can't determine why you lost one or more. A lot of times we don't get an answer.

Just to make it easy for you, here's your inspector info.

https://www.ncbeekeepers.org/resources/ ... on-program

No failure here, just normal nature. Try to learn why and hope for better this year. They are insects, not exactly at the top of life chain.