Weekly Photo Challenge: Unusual
Unfortunately losing one of our hives of bees is not an unusual thing for us over the winter. This hive death was unusual in that we are not yet sure what caused it and we were able to find the queen in the pile of dead bees.
(She’s the one in the middle, black body, head down.)
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I am sorry to hear this. Do you have other hives that made it?
We do. We only had two hives we were over wintering this year, this one actually just died in the last few weeks, the other one seems fine. Sadly overwinter half is about par for us. We are trying a little different hive design this year to see if it helps. Should be interesting!
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Kind of a sad picture. Was the queen alive? I don’t know a lot about bees, but they’re interesting to watch. Can the queen fly because her wings look very small.
Nope they were all dead. Queens can fly but don’t leave the hive very often. Usually only for a mating flight. If the hive were to swarm (half the hive leaves to start a new hive) the queen would fly then as well.