My Dead Out

[daniellucas1193]

was there still plenty of mush remaining after the deadout to indicate anything besides running out of food? My bees have been feeding pretty heavily, I've had to restock their hard candy a few times. The mush was not lasting nearly as long as the hard candy. I've got candy trays on 2 hives and I've just been doing the ziplock mush method on the 3rd. I finally swapped the tray to one hive that was consuming a LOT and put the mush on the hive that was using the least amount because I was afraid they'd run out.


In David Burns' blog today he talks about initial overwintered hive inspection

http://basicbeekeeping.blogspot.com/

He mentions mold during part of it:

Mold and dampness. It is common for beekeepers to find dead and moldy bees in frames too. This means that your hive had too much moisture over the winter and that you needed better ventilation. Every winter, in our yards, the hives that do best are the ones with opened screen bottom boards, drafty holes and propped lids.

What to do about moldy dead bees in a hive. Shake them out or rub them out, at least as many as you can. You can’t get them all out. They are dead, they won’t sting you. Be careful not to break the comb if you try knocking out the dead bees. Typically, we don’t worry about the mold unless it is really thick. A slight glaze of green or white mold doesn’t worry us. We reuse the frame and let the next package clean it up. Dead bees stink bad! Sometimes beekeepers ask me if they have American Foul Brood since there is such a stink in the hive. But I remind them that there is little to no brood in the winter to smell. The smell is the dead bees.

[OrionsEchoes]

The mush I provided was virtually untouched. The scent was primarily earthly, woody, but pleasant overall in the box.

[JohnH]

No one mentioned the burr comb. Was that there in the fall or did they build that over the winter? It looks like the frames were drawn out correctly but at some point they weren't spaced evenly. You have to be careful about that with 9 frames in a 10 frame box. I'm just guessing, but the gap could have made it more difficult for them to cluster for heat and to move to feed. They may have had to consume more stores than normal with that arrangement.

[OrionsEchoes]

The comb was built during the winter. I plan to go back in, shake some more dead bees off (planning on letting the new ones to clean it up), and close it up in anticipation of getting a package to restart. I will post photos of any questionable bee stuff on the frames. The last picture shows just one hive body -- that is after I cleaned up. It was actually two hive bodies, the top with mush bags.

[KandGMeier]

If the bees drawed out that burr comb this winter, they may have wasted their stores in doing so. Goes to show us how much they really don't like large gaps between frames.

[ken]

From your photo it only shows one hive body, was that all you had on this hive. If so your hive was not strong enough to live through a winter like we just had. Most hives need two hive boxes with the bees in the lower box at the start of winter and a top hive body full of honey. as winter passes the bees move from the lower to the upper and feed on the honey in the top. You may not of had enough bees in the box for a good winter cluster and if you only had one hive body your bees didn't have enough honey to live through the winter.

[JeffcoBeeman]

Looks like they starved. During winter, two main causes. Starvation or mites. Heads in cells is usually good sign of starvation. I wouldnt worry about using the comb.

[nightwriter]

It's amazing to me that they could starve while there are full frames of honey all around them. The hive I lost was totally empty on the bottom and had five full frames of honey remaining on the top. The other five frames were still had sections of honey but with a fair amount of bees stuck headfirst in the cells. You could see where they had chewed up some of the comb as well. I suppose with such frigid conditions this winter the poor girls couldn't even move! Well, at least I have plenty of comb and honey to get the new packages off to a quick start.

[JeffcoBeeman]

Funny thing about bees is that they can starve an inch from honey. When we get long spells of cold weather below 35 (like we had this winter), they cluster up and wont move, no matter how close the honey is to them. If they dont happen to cluster over ample honey, they can starve. Bees can only stay tightly clustered for about 3 weeks, then they need to relax the cluster during a warm spell of over 40 degrees. They HAVE to take cleansing flights at about 3 week intervals to defecate, without that break too, they can die. We went for almost 2 months without such a break in the weather, so they didnt have a chance to take cleansing flights, or move to more honey. That is the primary reason in northern climates that they wrap their bees. In fact, in many parts of Canada, each fall they kill the bees, and start over with a new package in the spring. Less costly for them in the long run. As for the chewed comb, that was likely caused by other bees robbing out the dead hive. When robbing, they dont neatly remove the cappings, they just chew into the cells to get to the honey inside. Also remember, bees work their way up. They started in the bottom frames, but the gap between the bottom of the top frames may have been just too much for them to cross in the cold weather. As for side to side, they cant move side to side, unless they can break cluster sometime during the winter.

[beekeeper]

Originally Posted by daniellucas1193

was there still plenty of mush remaining after the deadout to indicate anything besides running out of food? My bees have been feeding pretty heavily, I've had to restock their hard candy a few times. The mush was not lasting nearly as long as the hard candy. I've got candy trays on 2 hives and I've just been doing the ziplock mush method on the 3rd. I finally swapped the tray to one hive that was consuming a LOT and put the mush on the hive that was using the least amount because I was afraid they'd run out.


In David Burns' blog today he talks about initial overwintered hive inspection

http://basicbeekeeping.blogspot.com/

He mentions mold during part of it:

In my experience I would agree that it could be mold, but I am not an expert, just sharing my opinion based upon my own experiences beekeeping.