Biscuit7991
New Bee
- Joined
- Jun 15, 2014
- Messages
- 11
- Reaction score
- 0
- Location
- Llanrwst
- Hive Type
- National
- Number of Hives
- 4
Hi all, sorry if this has been done before (I have been browsing but found nothing exactly like my situation...) So, my dilemma is this; last week (July 26th) I opened one of my hives and saw a healthy colony with lots of bees and brood. I decided to add another box (Note that I don't use foundation or queen excludes and I use the Rose Hive Method. When I added a box I pyramided three frames up to encourage the bees to move into the new space.) Today when I opened this hive I was a bit unsettled. I found that the bees had all clustered towards the entrance of the hive, leaving behind to the brood to the rear of the hive. A wasp flew out carrying a larvae and the bees had not built any new comb; it almost seemed as though the population in the hive had decreased. After examining the frames, I saw that a lot of brood had died, there was unsealed larvae and pupae (both worker and drone) and some the heads of these pupae were completely hollow. I pulled out some of the dead brood and saw no sign of varroa, however I have seen some bees with deformed wings in the past, but only one or two at a time. Some of the larvae looked as though they had black/brown tops. (Note that there was much more sealed brood than there was unsealed in the rear of the hive.) As far as the main cluster of bees is concerned, they seemed a bit groggy and slow, but over all healthy. The queen was seen and some eggs were seen (though not as much as I would have liked to have seen) and there was sealed brood. No stores were seen. Admittedly there was little to no stores last week also and I had intended on buying sugar but I completely forgot. I have purchased sugar tonight however and I will feed tomorrow. What I have done for now is remove the box I added last week and moved the frames back down into the bottom box (the hive is now only one box high). When I did this the hive seemed to be overflowing with bees again. So, any thoughts or advice would be much appreciated. I'm currently thinking that they got chilled due to there being too much space (plus the weather has been terribly wet and cold for the past week or so). What do you think?
Thanks.
Thanks.