Thursday, January 26, 2012

Bad News Bees

OK, I have some bad news. The bees in my hive are no more. Wax moths, the evil little things, killed off all of my bees, and destroyed the hive in the process.What we thought happened was, that the queen probably got killed somehow, and the hive became weak. That just gave an opportunity for the wax moths to take over.  It is so sad to have a whole colony die out like that.

 This is the bottom board, covered in who knows what, and the little nasty larvae. When we pulled it out, the whole pile of mess was moving, infested with little larvae like this. Ooh I have the heebie jeebies!

OH! the Horror!









We have read, instead of just cleaning up the frames, you just need to burn them and buy new ones. So, that is what we plan on doing. We don't want to doom the next colony by not cleaning up all of the eggs and such.

But, we are not going to let this stop us! Its a learning process, and we already have another order in for a bigger package of bees this year, we will try it again!

On a Happier note, Dad's top bar hive bees are doing wonderful! No Problems at all!

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