This is just devastating. I am sure that I killed the girls by letting them get wet from the rain. I went into the winter with a very strong hive. Then most of them died before winter (I estimate that I had better than 80 thousand bees in my hive at its peak, healthy gorgeous and three supers of honey off them their first year), and there were literally thousands of bee bodies around the bee yard because after I took the supers off, there was no where for the extra bees to live, so my guess is that they just sat outside and died. So I did worry a little going in to winter, but after the first of no less than seven freezes this year (very unusual for Oregon), I opened the hive in December to find a HUGE "bee ball" inside, a warm pleasant smell, and a comforting humm coming out of it. Those girls were determined to stay warm! The hive boxes themselves were frozen to the ground so I could not pick it up and test it for weight. I just worry alot. So, I started feeding them sugar water in the top feeder. Then there seemed to be an awfully lot of water collecting on the top cover a few weeks later upon inspection, and it looked like it would rain on the girls, especially if I took off the top feeder, which seemed to be a bit of a rain catcher. Well, then I thought, perhaps all the water on the top is condensation because I (bad mommy) did not cut any ventilation hole in the hive boxes before installing the girls. So, I "vented" the top by placing a small stick in to make a vent in the lid. Well, in early February it was gorgeous, had a few days in a row that were almost seventy degrees. Lots of activity from my hive, the front was literally covered with girls enjoying the weather. Then, first week of MARCH, it froze again. I looked at my girls last weekend and found them all dead. I take that back, I opened up the top and three bees flew out and away. There were no more living ones in the hive. I found lots of them molded to the bottom frames in the bottom box, some of the frames in the bottom box have mold growing on them and have shrunken some, but full of capped honey. The top box (deep super) is also full of 10 capped frames of honey, and no mold in the frames, just some moldy bees to brush off the top. The very bottom slatted bottom is full of dead bees and water. I have several questions now...
1) Can I brush off the dead, moldy bees and use the capped frames of honey in my hive body for the new package? Is the mold a problem, or will they clean it? I doubt the honey is moldy, just some bee bits and probably whatever is on the combs is moldy, and the frames in the bottom box...can I use all of it and expect that the new girls will clean it? If I can reuse both of them, then I will have enough to start two new hives...
2) Should I have some sort of a covered area, or some sort of a shelter for the hive in the winter? Or do you think that I really did kill them by venting the top?
I don't think that any sort of disease had anything to do with my hive's demise as they were very strong and very healthy in February. Although, I was quite surprised that they did not remove the dead bees from the Summer away from the hive...looked really bad all winter when you'd come out and look at them because the first thing you'd see was thousands of dead bees...but I really do think that the hive was just so big and I stole their third and fourth story when I took their supers that they had no where else to go. Do I sound freaked out? I am...feeling like a huge, dumb failure...