Sad, Sad Day

What I have feared happened. I have lost my first colony. It is weird because it isn't like loosing a pet. They are just insects after all. But they are my insects that I have put a ton of time and effort into. Worse yet, I might have been able to prevent it. I did a quick look and most of the frames are totally empty. There are a few spots of honey but nothing substantial. The weird thing is that there aren't a bunch of bees with their heads in the comb, as I have heard it would be with starvation, and there was a bunch of bee candy they didn't touch. I didn't take the hive totally apart because I want to see if a more advanced beekeeper will go through it with me. I want to do this because if it was starvation I can reuse this comb. If not, what was it? And is it safe to use the comb? It would certainly help the next colony if they didn't have to start building comb from scratch but I don't want to put another colony on this comb just to have them die out from some disease.

I'm not real happy about Hive 2 either. They are still alive and there is enough heat coming off of them so I know the queen is laying but the cluster is pretty small. There might not be enough bees to keep the brood warm. It would help if it warmed up around here but that isn't supposed to happen at least this week. All I can do know is feed and hope the warm weather comes quickly.

So there are some things to learn from this for me and for you. Location is important. Very important. My property is off the beaten path, which is good for a lot of things (nobody messing with my hives, reduced threat of pesticides, lots of wildflowers) but when we get record snows it is not so good. I couldn't get back to them for the last couple of weeks. If I had maybe Hive 1 would still be alive.

The bigger thing is to watch the honey stores closer. Going back to last fall I was suspect that the honey store was low. If this had been a mild winter maybe that would have been ok. As one of the coldest and the snowiest winters we have ever had they needed even more than usual to get through. So now I am going to go every weekend until our nectar flow starts and hope to get Hive 2 through March.