Total number of viable colonies has now been reduced to 6. All colonies on the campus berm have perished. I am now considering moving the hive stands from the berm to a less exposed area. We lost all 7 colonies which were located on the berm. A new location is most certainly warranted.
The colony at officer Ed’s property and the polk building property are still viable and very healthy.
We also lost one of the Warre hives at the Niagara property. This loss was a complicated one. I learned a few lessons from this problem.
I opened the hive on a nice day and suddenly discovered that this colony was extremely weak on the very edge of collapse. I could immediately see the queen and that she had been laying eggs. However there were only approximately 45 worker bees with her. One more cold evening and the colony would have certainly failed.
I caged the queen and moved her and the workers to a 3 frame Nuc box. I took one frame of brood and nurse bees from a stronger hive and combined them. I then smoked the box extensively. There was a problem though. The candy plug I put into the queen cage was not secured. The queen escaped prematurely and I found here being attacked and balled about 15 minutes later. I rescued the queen and caged the queen again and checked back the next day.
The next day the queen was released. She was working the brood frame had begun to lay new eggs. I assumed that we were in the clear and that she was doing just fine with the new bees. However, a quick check the following day revealed that she had died or was attacked again and was on the bottom of the hive.
So what did we learn from this queen death. I should be far more careful about queen rejection when combining bees from different colonies. It is possible that this queen was not viable and that is why the foreign workers killed her off but she was laying eggs and appeared to be a viable queen. So I probably just screwed up the introduction of new workers to strengthen the hive. More care is needed with queens and new bees.
Also, the small 10watt heater did not do anything to keep these bees strong during the cold winter nights.
