[Sudanpan]

Well - with much trepidation I opened up the hive this morning because:
The wind calmed down
and the sun came out!


So - I found about 2 handfuls of dead bees - half on the varroa mesh floor and half on/in the queen excluder (under the brood box) When I say 'in' I mean they seemed to be stuck in the excluder which I found very puzzling    I know drones are too big to get through but these were def workers so I have no idea what was going on - the excluder was one supplied (new) from Fragile Planet with our 'beginner hive' package - can you get queen excluders that are too small for workers??


Anyway - I did find some live bees    Ok, so the colony is very very small - as in there were approximately large palm sized areas of clustering bees on 4 sides of 3 frames. I didn't want to muck about them about too much given all the upheaval and weather crap so didn't have a close inspection as to what was going on on each of these frames - I was just overjoyed to find some live bees.

What I did was remove the dividers and put them on the outside - but I now wonder if I should have left them where they were and create an equivalent nucleus space so that the small number of bees that there are don't have to keep a whole brood box volume warm..... I also checked that the feeder had syrup (it does) and put a sheet under the mesh floor to try and stop any excessive draught going through the brood box given that there are only a few bees.

There were some flying bees out and about, but not many so I think it is going to be a case of fingers crossed   to see if this colony can build up enough to take it through the winter to hit the ground running next year.


I'll leave it a week now and do a more thorough inspection next week.


Thanks for the supportive comments - it really does help 

[Beeducked]

can you get queen excluders that are too small for workers??

Thornes had a problem last year with orange plastic queen excluders that were too small and recalled them as I remember so it much happen.


Good luck, I hope they make it.

[john b]

Best of luck with the new bees. We were in the same position last year and managed to get ours through the winter OK. This year has been a right old game the bees got ahead of us in the good weather in March/April with swarms and I seem to have spent the early summer making hives (started with 2 nucs now got 5 full hives ) Just waiting to take off the honey crop I guess around 50KGs. Very interesting hobby and you do meet very helpful people. Many thanks to the local club for help with the swarms

Good luck John

[Small Farmer]

It's going to be a rubbish year for honey here.  The bees spent spring just surviving and we've had very little so far

[Beeducked]

Ditto with me.


One of my colonies almost filled a super but have now had to eat it all! Just glad I haven't had to feed them (yet!).