Lost hive opinions needed

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MrTrueman

House Bee
Joined
Mar 19, 2009
Messages
106
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0
Location
North Derbyshire
Hive Type
National
Number of Hives
2
Hi All,

I just wanted some opinions on a hive I lost in January.

I had to move all my hives to a new site just after the cold spell in January and noticed I had lost one.

No brood apart from about 5 cells.
Lots of stores, all free flowing honey.
Only about 5 bees with heads in cells.

When the hive went down before winter it was not massive, so it was on my endangered list. Also just before winter the bees had tried to supersede her but she was still laying and far too late to mate so I knocked it down.

So my feeling is failed queen failure or the cold due to number of bees. I have attached a photo of the number of bees.

All opinions gratefully received.
 
if that is all you had in your hive i would say it is not very many bees. queen failure, unable to move because of cold as you mentioned..etc.

Lauri
 
Bad luck - always a shame when anyone loses a hive :-(

If that photo of the floor is undisturbed, then the bees must have been well spread out across the hive. If this is the case, then they obviously weren't clustering together tightly to stay warm, which in turn implies that they had lost their queen, since its her pheremones that draw them all in together.

If they were spread out, then its the cold that got them, although if they were queenless, their winter survival would have been in vain.
 
Thanks for the replies.

The hive had bee moved before the photo was taken but the bottom looked pretty much the same as when I first opened.

Also you can see the queen in the centre of the photo, marked green.
 
Could be nosema,bee's with a severe nosema seem to lose the ability to feed,therfore the ability to also generate heat,so cold can finnish them off.
The nosema can be made worse by the stress of opening the hive in cold weather and pouring oxalic over them.
 

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