# starting over



## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

As soon as you have a hard freeze it should be safe from wax moths. I would check for AFB scale and any other sign of AFB before I would use it, but probably there isn't any. I would also look for Varroa feces in the cells (little white specs in brood cells) and dead Varroa on the bottom board. A booming hive often has a booming Varroa population. I would not ASSUME it is Varroa, but I would consider it a likely suspect.


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## Stephenpbird (May 22, 2011)

So you got your bees in June, they built one Warre box of comb in in a few weeks then nothing in July and August. Do you have a dearth in your area after the main flow? Do you have a fall flow? Were any of the bees found with their heads in the empty cells?


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## Harley Craig (Sep 18, 2012)

Yes drawn comb will give a new package a head start


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## Skygod1 (May 16, 2015)

There aren't any signs of any real activity of disease, mites, or anything other than 8 bars of comb. It's 95 percent empty, no brood except one cell with a dead larva in it. There was one bar that had about 20 percent of the cells of one side that had syrup in them. No honey stores at all and only a handful of cells that had capped pollen. There's no damage to the comb it's totally clean. It doesn't look like the queen laid any eggs at all. There's no signs of dead bees other than the 20 or so that was with the queen on the top of the bars. But nothing like I would expect from 3 pounds of dead bees that I thought i would find. 
I had left them pretty much alone all summer other than tilting the box up to have a quick look inside. It always appeared that they were fine. Lots of activity and I could see them bringing in plenty of pollen all the time. I never saw any signs of varroa on any of them. There were only a few beetles but no signs that they were doing anything. 
I plan on leaving the comb in the box and installing a new package in the spring. I'm truly sad over the loss but hope it turns out better next year.


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## Harley Craig (Sep 18, 2012)

If you see varroa its a bad infestation. I'm guess ing mites caused by our woes not enough winter bees small colony got robbed out and queen killed.


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