Swarm Hive Still Functioning

Noticed in the new snow yesterday perhaps a dozen dead bees outside the swarm hive. Some were 6 feet out or more. Looks like they are functional enough to clean up a bit.

Changes to Stripe Painting

Well, this looks better after some work yesterday. Coming along. Ann, see 'coffee stain' upper right :)

Bee Status Mixed

The good news is the swarm hive is still alive. Even saw one bee flying outside the hive on the 16th. Opened top and a lot of bees milling about in the inner cover hole. Temp mid 40s, sunny.

The package hive is gone, and below are some photos of various frames taken out. Note that there were dead bees in various random positions on these frames. In some places the dead bees were all clustered in the middle, with many half in half out of the cells. I took the tool and gouged these clumps out onto the snow. Removed almost all the dead bees from the hive. The only ones i left were so buried into the cells that it would have taken a lot more time to dig them out. Thinking probably these frames may need to be discarded. The photos show frames that i didn't have to dig large numbers of dead bees out. They're pretty much as is.

The frames below have been in use 2 years.

Note the large perfectly cleaned out cells at the bottom. Lots of honey in the top portion. This must have been one of the outside (non-central) frames.

This is a typical pattern of a non-center frame. A lot of honey to the side, pretty much devastated in the central area.

In these medium super frames i pulled a lot of dead bees clumped in the central area on the lower part of the frame. Also dead bees tended to be clumped into the upper empty cells as shown.

Another hive body frame with a lot of empty cells, but a lot of honey left in the upper part.

Cleaned Out Package Hive

Sunny afternoon to take apart the package hive. Cleaned out all the dead bees and generally scraped things down. Not too moist inside. The base is fairly wet, partly from honey dripping down. Frames themselves were pretty much as an active summer hive.

Salvaged about 10 frames with usable honey. Some frames had honey but looked like beginning of some kind of black mold, so did not put those aside. About 10 of those. In all, i think there were 19 frames that look bad, and i saved out 10 to extract from.

Bees were scattered throughout the hive, quite a large number of them with heads or more down in a cell. Just stuck there or anyway died there. This generally in areas where there was honey, but also in some of the dry areas, which were completely stripped of honey and just brittle wax. (It was about 41 deg.)

There was virtually no pollen in the hive. Can only remember one frame that had an area of pollen, about the size of my hand.

Put the damaged or probably unusable frames back in the boxes and  stacked the whole thing back up again to keep dry and await decision about whether they should be tossed or are salvageable. Need to take pics to send to Cam Lay, State apiarist.

Bad Bee Situation

Both hives had a large number of dead, damp, bees on the
bottom of the hive, although i don't believe the entrance
was blocked entirely in either case. Swept all the bees
out that i could. The floor of the hive was damp in
both cases. Taking the top off the swarm hive, i discovered
there were some live bees up at the inner cover oval,
moving and effectively covering the opening,
so i replaced the top and left it there. There wasn't
any response at the entrance to my scraping around, so i
was surprised at the live bees. No telling how many there
are. There were at least several hundred bees swept out
of each hive.

Looking into the package hive, there appear to be no
live bees there. Inside appears to be slightly damp all
around. Dead bees scattered throughout the top box. I
removed one frame and used a flash light to peer down into
the hive, and could see all the way to the bottom.
They didn't die from lack of honey, it appears that all
the frames in the upper box are full of capped honey.
Probably the queen died, or from lack of pollen they
were not able to reproduce. Will get back into the
hive next sunny warm day and see what can be salvaged
and make sure it dries out.  Removed the top box, used
for feeding, and put that in the garage. Put the top
cover over the inner cover.

High temp today low 40s. Except for a week or two of
fairly cold weather, temperatures have been moderate
all winter.