# My first dead hive



## Bigsal24 (Jan 23, 2015)

Just had my first experience about 10 days ago with a dead hive. I started beekeeping in spring 2013 with one hive from a purchased nuc. Since then I've caught a swarm, purchased additional nucs and been given untreated bees by a friend getting out of beekeeping. I went into winter this year with five hives. All have been treatment free since I've had them. I guess I've been spoiled---my first hive was a great success in spite of me. It built up fast and strong the first year, wintered great, swarmed in spite of my reversing the boxes and adding empty frames, and is still going strong. 

The dead hive was a nuc I purchased last spring. They had a good year, and filled all but one frame of two 10-frame deeps, went into winter heavy. I checked them on a warm day in January, and there was a cluster the size of grapefruit and all seemed well. About 10 days ago it was very warm and there was a lot of activity in all the other hives, but not that one. I checked and they were dead---there were maybe 100 bees, some dead headfirst in cells and others just dead on the comb. There was very spotty capped brood on one frame. I did not find the queen. There is probably 60 pounds of honey left. No obvious sign of disease, the comb looks fine, no odor, and the dead bees do not have deformed wings or any other problems I can see.

I know there are mites, but I don't count because I've made the decision not to treat. My first hive made treatment free seem easy. Any thoughts? Should I assume it was mites in the absence of other evidence?


----------



## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

My guess would be a failed queen in the middle of winter and the mites 
got them at the end. With tf an infestation can last a few months into the early
part of the next year. That is the tradeoff of being tf. I would get better resistant queen to 
evaluate for better handling of the mites the next time.


----------



## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

10-20% overwintering loss is what i have been averaging, with queen failure a common finding. one post mortem sign of mite infestation is 'frass' or 'guanine' deposits in the empty brood cells, which are small whitish flakey specks that look kinda like dandruff. (you can find pictures of mite guanine deposits by searching) you might also try uncapping and removing the pupae left on that spotty brood frame and look for deformed wings, stunted abdomens, and other signs of disease. i would consider putting your dead out frames in a freezer for at least a week and keeping them protected until you can repurpose them in another hive.


----------



## Bigsal24 (Jan 23, 2015)

Thanks for the advice and encouragement. I froze the frames for 72 hours, but I'll examine them as you suggested and put them back to freeze for a longer time. I did look for frass and didn't see any, but I'll look closer. Uncapping the pupae never occurred to me-----I'll do that as well.


----------



## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

excellent '24. i've already fed back most of the honey frames from my two dead outs to hives that were a little bit lighter than the rest. i'm keeping the pollen frames in the freezer to prevent them from molding, and those will be given to this year's splits. the empty comb frames are also safer in the freezer as they are protected there against wax moths, although it hasn't yet warmed up enough here to be too concerned about them. seems like i read somewhere that it takes about a week in the freezer to kill off nosema spores, but i'm not sure about that.


----------

