# Big mistakes need some advice for existing hive



## tumbelweed (Mar 2, 2015)

Hi everyone 
Last summer my hive split leaving me a small hive then between the hornets taking bees and small yellow jackets eating honey there wasn’t much left for them just a small handful of bees and maybe a few combs of honey left. Using Ruth Meredith idea I made bee fondant blocks and put some in the old drone comb. It’s been pretty cold here on some evenings, so yesterday it was in the mid 50’s I went out to give the bees the fondants blocks I open up the hive and they were all dead they were still frozen to the comb some with their heads in the comb looking for food I think. Even a few yellow jackets were frozen with its head in the comb. There were a few bees I think from my stronger hive buzzing the hive checking it out. The stronger hive I think has enough honey. I was trying to go through the hive to see exactly what’s in it but one bar I didn’t realize that the comb was attached to the sides of the hive and I snapped it off from the top bar so now the comb is free standing attached to the sides of the hive I left it with the top bar sitting on top of it. At this point I didn’t want to do any more damage and close the hive back up. I did open it back up and gave them the fondants blocks and two combs of fondants. This is my first year with the bees; I see I’ve made several costly mistakes. I live in the North East it's ben pretty cool here at nights so next Sunday it’s supposed to be in the 60’s. My questions are maybe I should take the fondants blocks and comb out replace them with the honey from the hive that died? And if there is any honey left should I freeze it for spring time and feed it back to them. Also should I take the rest brood frames out and freeze them for the winter. I’m limited on freezer space so I thought maybe I could clean the hive up and blocking the entrance so nothing else could move in before spring. If I block off the entrance can I leave all the brood bars or left over honey combs in the hive because during the course of winter it will be in the freezing zone.. Any suggestions greatly appreciated.
Thanks Doris


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## tech.35058 (Jul 29, 2013)

First the disclaimer ... I do not have top bar hives & I am a relatively new bee keeper myself, from way south of you. I may be an idiot.
It is to cold for wax moths & hive beetles already, the empty or brood combs will be ok where they are for now. Plus, as you have seen the wax will be very brittle. be ware of ants. maybe too cold where you are, but they are still in my hives.
When you say your hive "split", I assume you mean they "swarmed" out, & those left behind did not make it. 
First, I had a hive I thought had died out last spring ... later when I was regrouping, I found a very small group of bees living in the hive, with eggs. apparently when the bees warmed up a little, they weren't as dead as I thought . Of course, I had other hives that were quite dead, also 
and then , in my efforts to prop up the remnant, my added bees overwhelmed the survivors, & made themselves a new queen. I still had bees in the box, just not the gentle bees that were in the box to start with.
If there are stores in the dead out, & you are sure the be bees are gone, I would be inclined to give it to the remaining hive, to help them survive. If the other hive does not have room in it, I would leave it in place for a while. the other bees will probably eat the sugar before they eat the honey, & when there are empty combs, then I would swap the leftover stores into the remaining hive.
keep in mind that as the weather warms next spring, you will need to preserve the wax in the dead out, either by storing in a freezer, sealing plastic or by installing a new package, or perhaps splitting your overwintered hive ( I am thinking positive, they will be fine 
the concern in these scenarios for next spring, is to remove & protect all the "spare" comb, only leave the bees as much as they can cover, 80% or so. & feed the spare back to them as they grow into it. Good Luck .... CE
PS ... I am sure other beeks more local to you, or your climate will probably offer better advice. ce


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## ruthiesbees (Aug 27, 2013)

Sorry to hear that the tiny hive didn't make it, but they do need a critical mass of bee bodies to generate the heat to keep a colony alive. Like Tech said, there may be some bees alive in the tiny hive after they warm back up. Feel free to go through that one and make an inventory of what you have in the way of combs, capped stores, etc. You shouldn't find much in the way of capped brood since the queen would be shut down for the winter. Wax moths are not a problem now and I can't imagine the ants are running around either. So 48 hrs in the freezer should be enough to kill any pest eggs and then you can store them outside of the freezer until they are needed.

As far as the thriving hive, I'm not sure I'd do too much peaking around where you are breaking the propolis seal that the bees have worked so hard to seal up the drafty cracks. IF they had enough stores going into winter and the stores were all moving in one direction, you shouldn't need to do much at this point. A warm day in February might be when you insert the capped bars of honey (or if it's really honey and not capped sugar water, take one for yourself)

If however, you have a bunch of empty comb in the thriving hive, you should replace that now with the capped stores of honey and fondant. Just make sure all the capped stores are to one side so when the bees start moving sideways, they can keep going that same direction as they eat through the stores. You don't want a scenario where the bees are in the middle of the hive with capped stores on either side of them. I read that they aren't very good at deciding between the 2 directions, so you want to make it easy for them to only go one way...toward the food.

The drawn and empty comb should be just fine in your garage until the early spring, if you've frozen it for 48 hrs. You will use that once the spring flow is back on. As for the comb that has detached from the topbar but is glued to the sides of the hive, it also should be fine until early spring. You shouldn't be shuffling the bars around at this point anyway, and the bees are not building new comb.


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