Honeybound, What to do?

[Greg watkevich]

Checked my 2 hives.  Appears they made it through the harsh NewEngland winter. Got to -26 a couple nights.  Anyways, thought the bees would run out of honey and starve because I didn't feed all winter and the cold weather never let up to allow me to open up the hives.  I opened both hives yesterday 3/18.  Tons of dead bees on the bottom (10,000 -20,000) in each hive, but still lots of bees left.  Didn't see the queen in either hive.  Didn't see any brood either. There was tons of honey though. The bottom deep was about 7 frames full of honey, The upper deeps has about 5 frames of comb mostly uncapped honey.   What to do?  I didn't really have time to look for the queen so she might be there.  Just would like to see some brood.

[AllenF]

Open up the center of with some empty frames so she can start laying if she is in there with a honey bound hive.   The tons of bees in there, are you sure they are from that hive and not just robbing it out if the hive died out during the winter?   The bees on the bottom board have me worried.   They should be getting cleaned out if there are any house bees left.  And there should be brood now.   

[Jim134]

Are you'r bees bring in pollen? My bees in S.Athol,MA. have been  for about 2 weeks.



  BEE HAPPY Jim 134 :)

[Finski]

.
When you have a good weather, rearrange the hive .
- Extra room off
- extra food off
- pollen frames near centre

Before that clean the bottom

[MTWIBadger]

My 4 hives are also void of brood but with plenty of honey and bees.  March has been cold here with only 3-4 days over 50 degrees when the bees have beeen able to fly.  They were bringing in a little pollen one day last week. It looks like the queen has not started laying yet in all of my hives.  I turned on my 7 watt light under one hive with a SBB on the ground hoping it will stimulate the queen to lay sooner than
the other hives.

[Finski]

I turned on my 7 watt light under one hive with a SBB on the ground hoping it will stimulate the queen to lay sooner than
the other hives.

You have there winter. No idea to stimulate bees to anything. Just wait that spring arrives.

[Greg watkevich]

Thanks for the input.  Our winter was very cold and snowy and I had the reducer in all winter and think the bees were unable to clean out all the dead bees that were piled all along the back of the hive. Bees really couldn'y get out much because of teh low temps.  Hopefully soon, but not this week as weather is forecasted to be cold, raw and snowy, but I plan to do a more thorough inspection of the hive next time. I plan to look for the queen and more closely for larva or eggs.  I'm not sure how concerned I should be at this point about having no brood because the weather really hasn't warmed enough as yet.  Also next inspection, I will move the frames with bees on them to the center of the hive, right now they are all on the right side and will pull some of the deeps with honey out and replace them with empty frames and see what happens.

[Jim134]

Greg.........
Did it not snow about and 1" today ???


   BEE HAPPY Jim 134 :)

[Vance G]

It is snowing right now and 8" forecast here in Montana.  Winter is never going to end till we burn some rubber tires to get the pollution level back up!

[Finski]

.
Moving brood to centre does not help.

Take those frames off which do not havebee cover.
Then put a movable wall to reduce the bee space.
Reduce ventilation.