What did I do? PANIC!
Why -we were worried because we'd not seen bees flying from one of the hives for the past few days because of the cold, wet weather here this week. Opened hive and saw on the super what I had feared - starvation - heads tight into empty cells and a few dead, not quite hatched bees with tongues out!
This hive had increased very quickly - we'd put a super on a few weeks ago - but then the weird weather turned up and over a month we might have had two days a week fine, so I'd asked a another beekeeper at the beginning of the week whether I should feed them.
Immediately, we got our syrup out, and dribbled some down the frames where the bees were. Found the queen, she was still alive. Took off the super and brood box - there was a pile of dead bees on the floor of the hive - so we shook those into a box, re-established the hive and dribbled some syrup onto the hive and on the bees in the box, now in the sunshine.
Although we've lost a lot of bees - the weather hit zero last night as well so I don't think that helped - within a hour of being in the sun, putting a feeder on and just keeping an eye on them, they were flying again from that hive and a few were recovering in the box, to the extent that the remaining bees there were walking en-mass back into the hive by the evening.
Tomorrow more thicker syrup whilst the fondant thaws out from the freezer as the weather over the next few days is wet and windy again!
If we'd not checked today, we might have lost the whole hive, so even at tis time of year, check and check again for stores!
