All campus hives were visually inspected. The previous commercial hive which suffered a poisoning last week was inspected. There is no further dead bee accumulation at entrance. An inspection reveals a healthy queen with eggs, larva and brood present. The hive activity looks normal and the numbers look good. This colony was given sugar water.
The wild17 swarm genetics hive was pronounced dead. When I approached the hive it was immediately obvious that the hive was being robbed out with huge numbers of bees. The traffic at the entrance was astonishing. The activity inside the hive was all robbing and was completely disorganized.
This colony simply did not survive the poisoning. I believe that the queen stopped laying and there were not enough workers to keep the hive going. Through out the recovery process, I never saw any new eggs being layed except for the odd couple in various locations. Not only did the colony suffer a huge loss in bee population, I also think the queen was damaged from the pesticide exposure and stopped laying.
Even after removing the hive, for the next hour bees were still arriving back to rob out the absent box. I closed down all the entrances on the adjoining hives and all other hives as well. We are well into a dearth and the hives are starting to rob each other. I moved this box and the fully drawn frames back to the Niagara street house. I moved one of my smaller 3 frame starter colonies into this hive body.
