skyebee
New Bee
OK,this is going to be my first post here and a little complicated,but i hope that i can get some advice.Firstly some background;
I am a second year beekeeper with one colony housed in a double brood box.i live on Skye,where we have had a fairly mild but very wet and windy winter. at the close of last year i had two separate brood boxes,one of which produced a drone laying queen late in the year,I ended up introducing two new queens to my two colonies,one of which took,the other failed,which left me having to try and unite the two colonies at the close of the year,so i joined them with a sheet of newspaper to separate them,and they eventually integrated.
Winter passed with one feed of candy at the winter solstice and the log wait for good weather. like most of the country we had some sun three or four weeks ago,and my bees were out and busy,bringing back lots of pollen and young bees at the entrance,all looked well.
This weekend i decided to make a quick check,so went into the top brood box fairly quickly and without too much disturbance.the first thing i noticed was no capped brood,apart from some random couple of dozen drone cells,some packed pollen and plenty of stores at either end of the box,which was a surprise.taking out the centre frame i saw a queen,however,mine was marked with a white dot,so i am thinking maybe the dot got rubbed off?anyway she is wandering around,maybe two hundred or so bees all a bit docile apart from some slightly annoyed ones,so i think best leave alone,and set everything back.
Hmmm,then i get to thinking,duh!you didnt check for eggs,i dont know if she is laying or what,so decided to do a quick assesment today by taking te top brood box off in the hope of finding brood in all stages in the BOTTOM brood box.well,what i did find was a bloody mess,no brood,hundreds of dead bees on the floor,green mold all over some of the frames,and not much sign of any bees in there at all,not surprisingly.So,here are some pics of the BOTTOM brood box as i found it.
View attachment 6211
View attachment 6212
not nice!so i think maybe the old newspaper partition should have been removed after they moved in together,looks like damp crept in and the bees decided to get the hell out of there and into the upper brood box?
so,after a brief freak out,i cleaned the base out and put the top brood box back on its own,taking the other one down to the house,had a very quick check on the frames again and saw the queen,AND some eggs.now i am sure they are quite annoyed that i have caused so much interuption over the weekend and i want to leave them all alone now in the hope that everything will return to normal,so i am hoping that all is not lost.ALSO some globs of what looks like yellow pollen on the woodwork,is this pollen or dysentry?maybe getting paranoid now,any advice at this point would be very welcome.current thinking is to just leave them alone now to recover in a cleaner space and hope that the eggs are workers rather than all drones,but she has obviously been producing healthy young bees up until very recently,is that really likely to change?
oh,also some mouse droppings on the crown board and in the lower brood box.
I am a second year beekeeper with one colony housed in a double brood box.i live on Skye,where we have had a fairly mild but very wet and windy winter. at the close of last year i had two separate brood boxes,one of which produced a drone laying queen late in the year,I ended up introducing two new queens to my two colonies,one of which took,the other failed,which left me having to try and unite the two colonies at the close of the year,so i joined them with a sheet of newspaper to separate them,and they eventually integrated.
Winter passed with one feed of candy at the winter solstice and the log wait for good weather. like most of the country we had some sun three or four weeks ago,and my bees were out and busy,bringing back lots of pollen and young bees at the entrance,all looked well.
This weekend i decided to make a quick check,so went into the top brood box fairly quickly and without too much disturbance.the first thing i noticed was no capped brood,apart from some random couple of dozen drone cells,some packed pollen and plenty of stores at either end of the box,which was a surprise.taking out the centre frame i saw a queen,however,mine was marked with a white dot,so i am thinking maybe the dot got rubbed off?anyway she is wandering around,maybe two hundred or so bees all a bit docile apart from some slightly annoyed ones,so i think best leave alone,and set everything back.
Hmmm,then i get to thinking,duh!you didnt check for eggs,i dont know if she is laying or what,so decided to do a quick assesment today by taking te top brood box off in the hope of finding brood in all stages in the BOTTOM brood box.well,what i did find was a bloody mess,no brood,hundreds of dead bees on the floor,green mold all over some of the frames,and not much sign of any bees in there at all,not surprisingly.So,here are some pics of the BOTTOM brood box as i found it.
View attachment 6211
View attachment 6212
not nice!so i think maybe the old newspaper partition should have been removed after they moved in together,looks like damp crept in and the bees decided to get the hell out of there and into the upper brood box?
so,after a brief freak out,i cleaned the base out and put the top brood box back on its own,taking the other one down to the house,had a very quick check on the frames again and saw the queen,AND some eggs.now i am sure they are quite annoyed that i have caused so much interuption over the weekend and i want to leave them all alone now in the hope that everything will return to normal,so i am hoping that all is not lost.ALSO some globs of what looks like yellow pollen on the woodwork,is this pollen or dysentry?maybe getting paranoid now,any advice at this point would be very welcome.current thinking is to just leave them alone now to recover in a cleaner space and hope that the eggs are workers rather than all drones,but she has obviously been producing healthy young bees up until very recently,is that really likely to change?
oh,also some mouse droppings on the crown board and in the lower brood box.
