Yesterday, Saturday Feb 20, 2010, I stopped at the office to pick up the last of 3 packages, a hive body on backorder. Most of the afternoon, I worked on assembling 1 hive body, 2 supers and several super frames, glueing and nailing each to ensure their strength. I then got a first coat of primer paint on the hive body, supers, bottom board, inner cover and telescoping outer cover. I decided to drive up to the farm … they were having a Movie night, Food, Inc. … and I wanted to check on the 3 hives. I got there about an hour before the movie and with a enough daylight to see the bees coming in for the evening. To my surprise, 2 of the 3 hives had absolutely NO activity. I pulled the tops and found both of the hives “dead” … both with lots of rotted comb, wax moths, ants, cockroaches … ugh!
I didn’t have time (or my equipment with me) to inspect the other 3rd hive, but bees were coming and going and I could hear a strong buzz when I put my head up side the hive body. I’m not sure what happened … cold weather and not enough stores of honey? … colony collapse disorder? … a queen that died off or wasn’t replaced in time? I grabbed a stick and attempt to scrape off as much crap as I could from the hives and placed the hives unassembled as they would fit and the blocks there were on into my car to bring home.
Today, I spent most of the day working on cleaning up the hive body and supers that were up at the farm ... scraping the wax moth silk and larvae from the frames and boxes. It was nasty work. I also worked on painting the 1st coat of exterior white on the new hive. This will be the new home for the Carambola bees.
Stacey came over this evening and helped. We inspected the wild bees in the waxed cardboard nuc and they we gentle, but active in the hive with new comb and more bees ... a good sign. We assemble more deep brood frames and added foundation to some of the super frames. I'll continue getting the new hive ready and we hope to move the bees into their new home soon.
