Bee S I Miami
Content Warning: This post is kind of gross, so if you’d rather not read about dead bugs come back for the next one.
So the big secret is, we knew the bees had died back in November. We went to check on them a couple weeks after we closed them up for the winter we found that all the bees had died. It was really sad. We left them to sit in the hive all winter as there wasn't really a good time weather wise to go check out what happened. Two weeks ago we decided we finally needed to see what happened and get the hives all cleaned up for the new bees. We’ve been calling the investigation process Bee S I Miami all winter. The pictures are a little eerie as the bees are all covered in mold. Only look at them if you're comfortable with gross dead bugs.
When Mason opened the hive up he found extreme amounts of mold and decayed bee bodies. The mold isn't what killed the bees though, it's just a symptom of other issues with moisture control . The most likely explanation for the death of the colony is they were weakened by mites and fell victim to some other illness or virus. Bees beat their wings all winter to keep the hive warm and dry. In their weakened state they weren't able to do this as well as they should and the inside of the hive became moist. Wet bees are cold bees, and cold bees are dead bees.
We found some sealed queen cells, which indicated that the queen either left the hive or died at some point. There was still enough time after her disappearance to attempt to raise a new queen. The cells are sealed when the larvae are 8 days old so the queen was gone for at least a week before the rest of the hive died. Sadly the new queen cell was not enough to save the colony. This year we plan on treating for mites more aggressively based on advice we received from the folks who sold us the new colonies for this year.
Content Warning Again: Moldy Decaying Bees and Hive!!
