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| No Honey! |
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| No Brood! |
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| Frame 1: Larvae and Cobweb |
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| Frame 2: Larvae and Cobweb |
I am devastated. I went out to check on my honey bees today. It was a nice sun shining day and I have been seeing the honey bees on the peach blossoms, on the wild flowers, and on the blackberry blossoms. I wanted to check to see if I needed to feed them or were they collecting plenty of nectar. I knew something was wrong when I approached the hive because there was no activity of bees flying in or out of the hive. I open up the hive and noticed the syrup division board feeder empty. That seemed normal because it had been two weeks since I last fed them. But as I used my hive tool to move out frames, I noticed there was no activity. I took the whole hive apart. No live bees! I saw some queen cells which told me that they might have lost their original queen. And of course when she was born and able to travel she took the other honey bees with her. Another possibility, I saw about 10 web worm or wax worm larvae. Maybe that ran them out? But 10 larvae is not a lot. Another possibility, I saw quite a bit of carpenter ants. Could they have run off the honey bees? Or maybe the ants moved in after the bees moved out. But I did see quite a bit of dead bees on the bottom board.
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| Frame 3: I only had 3 frames that look like this. The rest of the frames were empty or had no honey or no brood. |
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| The number of honey bees that were dead on bottom board. The white stuff is the sugar fondant that fell down to the bottome board. |
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| A Swarm Cell |
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| Another Swarm Cell |
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| A closer view of the dead honey bees. The white stuff is the bee fondant that fell down to the bottom board. |
I scraped the frames and the hive body clean and my husband pressure washed them. As I was cleaning them a honey bee came up and spent quite a bit of time buzzing around the disassembled hive. I saw quite a bit of bees on the blackberry blossoms. I begged the bees to come back home. I even thought of kidnapping one of them and holding her for ransom until the queen and her entourage moved back home. My husband thinks they have moved to a hollow tree and are still close by. But how do you get honeybees to return home?
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| A honey bee collecting nectar and pollen from a yellow wild flower. Please come home! I will plant more wild flowers for you! |
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| A honey bee working on a red clover plant. Please come home! I will move your bee hive into my garden so you want have to fly far to gather nectar or pollen! |
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| A honey bee on a blackberry blossom. Please come home! I will plant more blackberry vines! This is the bee I thought about kidnapping and holding until the colony moved back home. |
Just found your blog because we were lost a large hive to the worms. Like you we checked them about 2 weeks ago and didn't see a problem. Now we've cleaned out everything and have found it suggested to put the frames in the freezer for a few days. Our problem is we don't know how to get a queen from another hive. Hope your bees came back this summer.
ReplyDeleteCurrently I have a very thriving hive. I ordered the package hive from http://www.beeweaver.com/
ReplyDeleteThey also sell just queens as well. I also am part of a local texas beekeepers association and some of the members there also sell individual queens for those who need replacement queens. You might want to check to see if you have a local beekeepers association near you.