Hive Lost
- Donna Brown
- May 4, 2021
- 1 min read
Updated: Aug 10, 2021
HIVE INSPECTION: 03/27/21
Absolutely heartbreaking day at the ranch. 💔💔💔
We lost our weak hive from the freeze after all. Don’t know if they froze to death or starved or a combination. They survived the ice and snow – or so we thought since we saw a couple of bees flying in and out of the entrance, but it could have been bees from the other hive just scavenging the last of the honey. We limped that hive along all year and then this happens. 😢🐝
The potential good news is the Hive A was chock full of bees and appears so strong and healthy the queen started laying brood in the honey super. Maybe not having a queen excluder between the boxes was a blessing in disguise. We added another brood box and an actual honey super with excluder. We might even have enough brood to split the hive if we can get a new queen ASAP - if not they will likely swarm and we’ll lose half the hive anyway.
In other news - the A Girlz were ANGRY. So so so very ANGRY. All three dogs got multiple stings and were rolling around crying - which was upsetting in of itself. Then Robbin got stung on the tip of his nose through his head veil, and through his glove and had at least 20 stingers in his jeans.
It was CHAOS in the apiary today.
[And for the record, a dead hive smells as bad as you imagine it.]
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