yep, that's what happened to freddie, my most productive hive, some time over the past week.
it had been ~10 days since my last hive inspection so i headed out to do a thorough walk-through on wed and noticed that freddie seemed to have much less activity than it usually does. because it was cold and windy, i wondered if the bees might just be staying inside to ride out the calorie-draining weather. yesterday it was warmer and less windy so i suited up and headed out.
approaching the hive, i noticed:
* lots of dead bees out front
* lots of barely-moving bees out front
* no pollen on any of the bees going in the hive
inside the hive there was:
* honey and pollen stores as if there should be a colony present
* no eggs, no new brood
* lots of dead bees face-down in the cells
* a fair number of dead bees scattered around the frames
* no evidence of mites, beetles, wax moths, etc
* no evidence of diseases
when i separated the hive supers from their base, on the bottom board there were lots of wax bits / chunks of wax, (apparently) a prime indicator of a robbing attack by another colony.
ray, the (formerly) under-producing hive next to it has sprung to life and appears to be doing well. the hive known as fuzzy also appears to be doing well.
so what i'll do w/freddie @ this point is pull the supers, harvest what honey remains for my own use, then bag and place the supers in the freezer until late winter / early spring when i hope to attract a swarm and re-stock.
sigh.
in case you're interested in more details about hive robbing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbing
it had been ~10 days since my last hive inspection so i headed out to do a thorough walk-through on wed and noticed that freddie seemed to have much less activity than it usually does. because it was cold and windy, i wondered if the bees might just be staying inside to ride out the calorie-draining weather. yesterday it was warmer and less windy so i suited up and headed out.
approaching the hive, i noticed:
* lots of dead bees out front
* lots of barely-moving bees out front
* no pollen on any of the bees going in the hive
inside the hive there was:
* honey and pollen stores as if there should be a colony present
* no eggs, no new brood
* lots of dead bees face-down in the cells
* a fair number of dead bees scattered around the frames
* no evidence of mites, beetles, wax moths, etc
* no evidence of diseases
when i separated the hive supers from their base, on the bottom board there were lots of wax bits / chunks of wax, (apparently) a prime indicator of a robbing attack by another colony.
ray, the (formerly) under-producing hive next to it has sprung to life and appears to be doing well. the hive known as fuzzy also appears to be doing well.
so what i'll do w/freddie @ this point is pull the supers, harvest what honey remains for my own use, then bag and place the supers in the freezer until late winter / early spring when i hope to attract a swarm and re-stock.
sigh.
in case you're interested in more details about hive robbing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbing
:biggrin:
fuzzy's always been a healthy / productive colony, but ray - like the kink's, themselves - has always been an under-performer.
the population of bees were very much centered in the center frames, so i'm thinking the queen *has* laid eggs and with the lighting it was difficult to see them. i swapped out a few of the less-than-full frames with a few of the honey-frames that i had removed from the upper supe, installed the inner & outer covers and moved on to inspect ray and fuzzy. it's not clear to me how much of a honey flow is occurring w/in a 3 mile radius of our place so as a bit of insurance, i'll put a sugar / water feeder on freddie tonight after the girls are tucked in for the night.
