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Chronological Thread  
  • From: Rosemary Wilson <rose.wilson AT embarqmail.com>
  • To: Chris Abernethy <cabernet AT chrisabernethy.com>
  • Cc: Phil DeGuzman <phil.deguzman AT gmail.com>, ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] One hive dead, one hive thriving
  • Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2013 11:15:32 -0500

Me too, and I treated both my hives with ApiLifeVar in the fall. I did find
quite a lot of dead bees outside the hive that failed in December, though,
and I think that once the colony begins to dwindle there are just too few
bees in the cluster to maintain sufficient warmth.
Rose
On Feb 28, 2013, at 10:57 AM, Chris Abernethy <cabernet AT chrisabernethy.com>
wrote:

> Phil,
>
> I have the same situation with my single first-year hive.
>
> --Chris
>
> On Feb 27, 2013, at 7:41 PM, Phil DeGuzman wrote:
>
>> I have two first-year hives side by side (I started them last April so
>> this is the first winter). I fed them right up until November when both
>> hives stopped taking food. I did a light check on them about every two
>> weeks (opened the top cover and looked for signs of life) through
>> December/January/February. Last weekend I went in for my first deep
>> inspection of the year. One hive was very active, lots of action in the
>> brood chamber and workers galore throughout the hive. Everything looked
>> better than I had expected.
>>
>> However, my second hive looked like...well...it looked like what I've
>> heard CCD hives look like. There were no living bees in the entire colony,
>> only about 200 dead bees throughout the hive. There was plenty of pollen
>> and honey (heck there were two fully capped frames that we went ahead and
>> extracted). There are still two mediums of fully drawn comb with a mix of
>> honey, pollen, some brood. The creepiest thing was two gianQuestion 2:t
>> roaches in the bottom of the brood chamber surrounded by the heads and
>> tails of a few dozen bees.
>>
>> Question 1: has anyone else seen this- a seemingly well stocked hive with
>> no bees remaining? No signs of carcasses in/around the hives. No slime,
>> fungus or foulbrood signs. I saw a couple of signs of mites, but nothing
>> excessive. All the CCD documentaries describe hives that are empty of bees
>> and no carcasses...could I be victim to that? I thought perhaps they might
>> have swarmed, but there were no signs of queen cups or anything like that.
>>
>> Question 2: Dare I try a split off of my healthy hive? Should I wait and
>> try a new package in April? EIther way, is it a good idea to reuse the
>> drawn comb and capped honey in the dead hive box? Concerned that if there
>> is some ailment that affected the bees that it might transfer to any new
>> bees I introduced.
>> I would like to have two hives to help pollenate the orchard and
>> garden...and as insurance in case one hive dies overwinter.
>> --
>> "I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I
>> can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to
>> do something that I can do.” - Helen Keller
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>
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