Bees dead on QE

[Machonachos]

So went into a hive yesterday and to my shock found 1000s of dead bees all stuck in the queen excluder.

Inspected the rest of the hive and plenty of food, space etc. No sign of disease and generally other than the dead bees everything looked happy.

Side notes: QE was dripping wet which I am assuming is condensate build up from the huge layer of dead bees. All other hive parts are dry.

I processed supers last week so could this be a factor of too many bees trying to force their way back down thru QE?


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[Ian123]

Do you have enough stores in the brood?...or are they drones? Even if bees had been trapped above bees below would have fed them. Any pics would help

 

[Machonachos]

All workers. Plenty of food in brood and they still had a full super left on.


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[Hebeegeebee]

Type of hive?

As bees can pass through the excluder (unless they are drones) that's weird.

Robbers getting in?

 

[Machonachos]

National. No real signs of robbing. Like I said it was very strange as brood and supers all seemed happy and heathy.

Shook off a brood frame and brood was looking good and present in all stages. Bees were calm. Only oddity was just how wet the QE was but again this may have been down to clogging up of airflow with dead bees.

A lot of bees seemed to be stuck in the excluder now I think about it. Never had a problem before tho.



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[Machonachos]

Tempted to give SBI a call this week to discuss.


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[Finno]

Wet QX and bees stuck would indicate that bees had vomited stomach contents. Must have been trapped in some way and vomited due to heat stress. It would only take one layer of bees disabled on queen excluder to prevent ventilation leading to them all smothering.

 

[Swarm]

Wet QX and bees stuck would indicate that bees had vomited stomach contents. Must have been trapped in some way and vomited due to heat stress. It would only take one layer of bees disabled on queen excluder to prevent ventilation leading to them all smothering.

Sounds very much like they were trapped.

 

[mintmoth]

I had this happen too, but the QE was quite dry and the dead bees dry - they were small drones.The colony was on double brood, but stuffed the top BB with honey, plus 3 supers above. I saw when I removed the supers that brood had been raised in some of the combs then later filled with honey. So I think the BB of honey made a barrier, some of the workers in the supers became drone layers for a while and those drones of course could not get out through the QE.
With the supers off everything back to normal.