What’s Going on Here Then?

[The Poot]

I removed two inspection trays today after 5 /6 days in situ.
One looks as I expected, the other was very different - the tray on the right in the photo and on its own.
There’s an excess of bee bits on the tray?
Some of the debris was too big to fall through the omf ( I tested it on a spare I have), so I assume were bees that went under the hive, even though the front is fully closed off. If so, they were chewed up after dying there?
Observations today -
There are some drones still coming and going - the bees were quite active today. (This colony culled it’s drones twice in Summer when the weather turned, but seems to be hanging on to some now - unless queenie has turned into a drone layer.....
Wasps are still cutting up dead bees in front of the hive - in mid December!
There is evidence of brood rearing - biscuit coloured capping and almost no varroa on the tray.

Your thoughts would be appreciated.

 

[Swarm]

Close look towards top right, is that some kind of poo as well? Mouse?

 

[pargyle]

I'd agree ...looks to me like a mouse has found a comfy home for a while and a source of protein - probably brought the dead bees in there and stored them for a meal when they were snuggling up in there. Beneath the debris you can see the normal signs of hive activity ... I don't think I'd be too worried. There does appear to be some signs of faeces in the top right corner - field mouse or shrew perhaps ?

 

[The Poot]

Thanks both: my suspicion was dead bees being taken there for some critters meal. I felt that many of the corpses look like drones too.
I was surprised to see drones still bimming about and then had thoughts of drone laying queen, but beneath the corpses the debris looks normal. So here’s hoping. There are lots of voles, field mice and shrews around here so I got the guards on as soon as the weather cooled.