We Lost One of Our Beehives

It was a sad day as we lost our first beehive Dec. 12th. I was getting ready to add a candy board to the hives. It was Anastasia which was Bug's very first hive. It was also our weakest hive. Bug was pretty sad over the lost. We had a bit of excitement with this hive around a month ago and I thought she was a goner back then.

 Around a month ago-November 11th we went in to check the hives before it got to cold. I noticed her numbers extremely low and the hive just didn't look very good.

 I couldn't find the queen and I seen a few mites on the girls. I think she had the tracheal mites looking back now. Of course I can't be sure unless I dissect a bee.

 Someone informed me to shake the bees off the frames. It was going to be a cold night. We had a lot of tears over the whole event.

 When I checked on them in the morning they all survived a very cold night. I was completely amazed that she made it in such frigid temperatures.

All of sudden they started to swarm into my closed shed from a small opening under the easement. Yikes! I had one of their empty boxes in the closed shed. My kids where in tears. They begged me to put the boxes back in place on the pallet. I couldn't resist the tears knowing it was too late for the girls.

Over half the bees where making their way into the shed. I suited up quickly and grabbed the box and they followed the box. It was kinda of neat watching the girls in action. They marched back into the hive. 

I put some sugar water out for the girls and they gobbled it up rather quickly.

As you can see from one of the frames it wasn't looking good. Some of the bees died before they could come out of the cell.

This is the girls going into the hive box. I could barely get the frames in quick enough.

Bees are pretty amazing creatures. I hoped for a miracle for the kids sake as that was their prayer. I didn't have the faith that the kids had so I told God it's in your hands.

Bug was happy that they survived the night. No more tears shed on her part. Even Little Man who want's nothing to do with the bees was cheering the girls on.

Then when I went to add the candy board I found them all dead. I know it happened in the last few days as I seen  a lot of activity going on just a few days ago. They were getting water and pulling out their dead.

I was able to inspect the hive and they just didn't have a large enough in numbers to form a good cluster. Many died with their head in the cells and in an extremely small cluster. Poor things.

So I extracted the honey as they had quite a few frames of honey and pollen. I put the other frames in the freezer. Our other hive Bolt looks pretty good and I don't think I need to add a frame of honey to her. Hopefully she will fair well the next few months during the winter.