Weak Hive

[manfre]

One of my 2 hives seems to be very weak. There are rarely bees at the entrance, but I do occasionally see bees coming and going. I looked up through the screened bottom and didn't see any bees in the lower box. I noticed some ants trying to sneak in the entrance today, with no response from the hive. I killed all the ants at the entrance and the conga line up the concrete block.

I'm not sure if the hive was robbed out by my other hive or if they are just downsizing for the winter. I refilled their feeder, put some pollen in the entrance and almost completely blocked off the entrance with some screen and wood. Is there anything else I should do to help ensure the hive does better? It's getting a bit too cold to go in to the hives

[hankdog1]

you need to go in just don't leave the frames out too long if they have brood if not get the ol newspaper out and combine the two hives.  they might have just moved up though as the queen likes to climb up when laying the reason why you rotate boxes.

[manfre]

There is mid 60s weather on the forecast for next week, so I'm going to burn some vacation time and go through the hive. I took a short video of the entrances to both my hives. They are bringing back pollen and there are a decent number of bees. Hopefully the lack of bees during the previous times I checked on the hive were due to the cold and the bees balling up higher in the box.

Beehive entrance video

[D Coates]

From what I saw I'd say your doing okay.  I had similar activity this weekend on my hives and when I opened them up to put in a sheet of newspaper and dry sugar stores on them the hives were packed.  If you can get in there when it's warm okay but I wouldn't do too much except to see if there's a good mass of bees and decent stores.