Just opened my hive, given we finally had a reasonable day in Northern California after number of weeks of rain. Right before Christmas the hive seemed pretty active. I left the super on and it had a reasonable amount of capped honey stored, as I wanted plenty left for the bees. When I got to the brood box, sadly my bees were gone. There were some dead bees at the bottom of the brood box, but not a huge number.
My question is what should be my next step. Should I leave everything intact for a few weeks and see if bees return, should I do something with the broad frames with honey? If I get new bees can I just add them to the frames and start new from there?
Not quite sure what the white is in some of the cells. Never had seen that before. Any guidance is appreciated.
Sorry to hear it, Cabodog. Did you test for varroa mites last season? If they had swarmed, chances are there would still be a population in there. Did you see any opened queen cells?
They won’t return, unfortunately. The point of swarming is to find a new home when the current one is too full. Even so, it seems more likely that they died out.
Freezing the frames for 24-48 hours will kill pest eggs and make them usable for a new colony. But, I encourage you to get a real pair of experienced eyeballs on this first - we don’t really know what happened, and if it was American Foulbrood then disposing of infected comb and scorching equipment is required. I don’t mean to sound dramatic, it’s just that there’s only so much folks reading your post could determine, compared to someone looking at it with you. Please post some pics of brood frames and we can try to give more input. The one you included is of bee bread and pollen.
