Lot's of dead bees, bearding, put super on too soon

Hi everyone,

I have the flow hive 2 and I got my first bees over a month ago. Things seem to be going well. However, in the bottom tray last week I found hundreds of dead bees. I cleaned it out and today there were another maybe 25-50 dead. Is this normal?

Also, they are bearding at the front entrance, I believe this is normal and not concerning.

Also, I didn’t realize that I couldn’t put the super on the brood box until the brood box is full. I already put the super on and I don’t know what I should do.

All your help is greatly appreciated!

Next time you inspect make sure that the screen bottom is installed correctly and that there aren’t any other gaps that allow the bees into the space above the tray. If there are a lot of bees bearding when you remove the tray to clean it sometimes they sneak in and get trapped.

How does the population of your brood box look? Do you have 8 or 10 frames? If the bees are pretty full and they are working the flow frames then you can probably leave it be, but if there isn’t much action I’d remove it and plan to put it on next spring unless you have a decent nectar flow in the fall.

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Hi there, thanks for taking the time to reply. I have 8 frames in the brood box and 5 of them have active bees from the Nuke I purchased.

I see them through the super box window and they are active in there at different times of day.

I guess I will do a brood box check and make the adjustments. How do you know when to put the super back on?

When the brood box is 80% or more filled and covered with bees.

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ok, thank you. Should I keep clearing the dead bodies out like once a week or so? I saw a video that suggested to leave what collection that tray so I’m confused.

Welcome to the forum Arrash! I can’t think of a reason to keep what collects in the tray any longer than needed to look & note what it consists of. I’d clean it of all debris, especially dead bees since pests like small hive beetles will use those to lay their eggs in. Make sure to dispose of them far away from your hive as well.

Thank You Eva! That makes sense. I will keep it clean. Didn’t think to dumb far away.

Thank you to Chau as well!

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