Hive Postmortem

I started going through the dead hive Saturday. It was a cool, rainy, depressing day so it seemed appropriate. But as I started into it I actually felt better. Maybe it wasn't me. There was quite a bit of honey left in this hive. Now I think what happened is that the cluster got locked in a position that when it turned really cold and we had the big snows for a couple of weeks they wouldn't break the cluster to get over to the honey and basically starved and/or froze in place, still covering the brood. You can see in the picture there is a small but well filled brood space (the picture that shows a spotty pattern was the outside of the outside frame. The others looked better.) that was covered with bees when I pulled the frame out. The other frame I left the bees on for the picture. The queen was still present in the middle of the cluster. You can see the marked dot on her back. Also notice a bunch of bees at the top all the way in the comb trying to get the last bit of honey in them. A couple inches back from the brood the honey begins. It is like this on all 3 of the frames the brood was on with the honey starting in the exact same point like they could eat back that far but not get over to the ends. The brood and cluster are pretty small. Since this is my first year I don't know if this is normal size or not, but this is the time of year the population is at its lowest.

It is impossible to say now but maybe the other colony was better positioned within the hive to be able to get to honey or maybe their genetics are such that they could survive a few degrees cooler. Also, there is a ton of pollen in this hive. Way more than they would use by the time the flowers would have started. If the other hive has a bunch I might think about putting a pollen trap on the hive and capture some of it.