Guilfordbeekeepers.org

Well walked into my backyard and 1 hive had a couple dozen dead bees at entrance. So pulled on my suit and popped the lid.

Lifted off Two full supers of honey and then saw the brood ball about fist sized. All dead and just sitting there 3 inches under a full super. Sigh, I guess I will have another hive to split into this year.

Pictures here: http://zbourne197.web.aplus.net/brucesbees/id1.html

I share in your disappointment. I had a couple of hives do that. I think that mine was due to a lack of proper ventilation. Maybe the condensation dripped back down on them and the temps got low and wham-o. Gone. Just like that. No chance to try and save them. Good luck with the split!!

I also have a dead hive. Three mediums full of honey stores. Should I try and save the honey frames and feed to other hives or is this risky giving a chance for spread of disease.
Thanks in advance.
John

Any reason to suspect disease??? Wing deformity....mites...K-wing???

Three mediums of honey....That's 30 quarts plus after extracting, plus 30 frames of drawn comb.

Maybe you shouldn't chance using them. I think it would be best to bring them to me for disposal.

Any guesses as to why the hive crashed, Wally...Kurt? Looks like plenty of bees to me. My hives look like they had fewer bees than that during the winter. Those pics look like there was enough bees to survive. bdloving...was the entrance reduced or did any moisture get in the hive?

well it seems to be just a handfull of bees, but I did have an entrance reducer in it. Could be with the 2 supers above the brood area, they just could not keep it warm enough.

Either save the full supers to extract when it gets warmer, or use them to feed other hives. I doubt we are through with the highly changeable weather yet. So plenty of chances for hives to over-build the brood area and get caught in a cold snap. Just remember, if you put a frame of honey in, but it NEXT to the brood ball. Above it just wont do as my hive showed.

The only reason I brought up the entrance reducer was because the hives I had crash all had the entrance reduced to a couple of inches. The bees can survive extreme colds AS LONG as there is proper ventilation. Not enough ventilation will cause the forming of condensation above the bees and when the water falls down it gets the bees wet. Then they freeze to death due to improper ventilation. Not cold weather per se. Since i have opened up the entrance reducers i have lost zero hives.

The only reason I brought up the entrance reducer was because the hives I had crash all had the entrance reduced to a couple of inches. The bees can survive extreme colds AS LONG as there is proper ventilation. Not enough ventilation will cause the forming of condensation above the bees and when the water falls down it gets the bees wet. Then they freeze to death due to improper ventilation. Not cold weather per se. Since i have opened up the entrance reducers i have lost zero hives.

well, lesson learned, I just finished visiting my sites, and have lost 8 out of 12 hives in the last month!!!!

3 looked like deadouts, the rest are just gone, gone, gone.
And the only survivors are the ones I covered the screened bottom boards in December.

So seems you can have too much ventilation as well as too little.

Swarms starting to look real good about now, soon as I get the boxes cleaned out.

Noticed some wax cappings on a hive landing board the other day and got to take a look today while checking out other hives.

The bees on the bottom layer of the cluster had their heads in the cells and there were a few capped cells of drone brood. It was kind of erie as they looked like they were still alive just a bit chilled.

just went in to check my hives. i started the winter with 7 strong hives. 1 hive was two hive bodies and a super full. opened it up today and it was empty not a bee to be seen. the super was still 10 frames full of honey.

the rest of the hives two weeks ago i opened on a very warm day (70 degrees, early afternoon) and gave them pollen patties on top of the brood area. when i opened them up today every single one of them had froze right under the pollen patty. what did i do wrong? i did the old squish method for putting the patties on that has never caused a problem before.

last question, any suggestions on building back up? i have two nucs on order. can i make those into more hives this year? i have about 5 supers of honey and 6 completely drawn out hives.

The hive with stores and no bees--you may want to call the state inspectors if the hive is still in tact and can be inspected. They may just talk you through the situation, but I think they have been hearing about similar situations with hives full of bees one day and all bees gone very shortly after that. I think they are trying to figure out what is going on.

The hives you put pollen patties on--how big were the clusters when you put on the patties? Did you check to see if they were queen right? What was the mite count on them last fall? Giving them patties would not be the likely cause of the losses.

My take on the last question--
Can you make more hives out of the two nucs you are getting? I think you could. I would look to hiving them up and letting them build up brood frames. If you have permanent nuc boxes, when you can pull 3 frames of brood, add a frame of honey and a frame of pollen (or 2 frames of honey and a small piece of pollen patty to start) AND purchase mated queens to introduce, you could make 2 more nucs from the 2 nucs that built into hives. As they build, put them into hives. While they build, keep reducers on the nucs or make robber screens that are nuc sized based on the Brushy Mountain 10 frame robber screen design. I made a couple of very ugly but effective nuc sized robber screens that kept nucs from being totally overwhelmed and robbed out.

Others may have better ideas or may disagree with the plan above. If so, I hope they will post suggestions.

the hives had good amounts of bees i would say the cluster was covering three frames in the smaller and about 6 on the larger ones. mite count was low in the fall. the weird thing was they were all under the pollen patties. its like by putting the patties above the cluster killed them. it seems like some how it caused them to freeze.

thanks for the feedback

Pollen patties need to be given in proportion to the cluster size. As most have found out, patties encourage small hive beetle growth.
A grapefruit size cluster may only receive a quarter of a patty while a basketball size cluster may receive a whole one.
A commercial beekeeper that I know has gotten away from patties and only feeds pollen substitute in dry form now due to small hive beetle.
I always break cluster and place the patties in the middle of them. I have not seen colony death by using this practice.

That's where I must have gone wrong. I gave them all full pollen patties.
Do you mean you put the patty between the frames? Or just directly above the cluster?

Patties are to be placed on top of the frames. By keeping the patty small and placing it on the frames in the bees they are able to consume readily without great effort and it does not restrict movement upwards.