Hive Collapse

​Hive Collapse
 
I must be honest and report that I am a complete failure at beekeeping this year.  My friend and I bought our bee “packages” about six weeks ago, one for each hive.  A “package” contains a queen and her attendants and about 5 pounds of bees.  Don’t ask me how they weigh the bees and I am strangely incurious about it.  I accept as a matter of beekeepers honor that we get five pounds of bees.  The queen comes in a tiny cage with 3 or 4 attendants.  There is a plug of sugar keeping the queen and her retinue in the cage.  The cage fits between several bee frames in the hive.  In the perfect world as the bees explore their new home they are attracted to the sugar gate of the queen’s cage.
We followed the process to install our packages in the hive to a “T”.  Then you allow 3 days for the bees to eat through the sugar gate of the queen’s cage and release her to do her job.  At the end of 3 days you check to be sure queen has escaped and the forages are foraging and the comb builders are building comb and all is right with the world.  Then you allow 21 days to pass.  After 21 days you check that the comb has been “pulled” on at least 6 of 10 frames.
I checked-nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  The only answer was that the queen was dead or worst case scenario, the bees rejected the queen and killed her.  No queen – no hive.  That’s the rules of beekeeping.
I checked with my supplier, they had queens available and assured me there was still time to have a healthy hive.  It would be problematic if I could harvest honey this year but I could have a healthy hive going into winter.  My provider was generous and gave me the second queen, which usually cost $40.
I followed the same procedure as earlier in the month.  This past Saturday, June 17th, marked day 21 and I could open the hive and peek in on their homemaking.  I’ve been worried for weeks because I haven’t seen a lot of bee activity around the hive, even on nice, humid, 90 degree days.  I opened the hive.  There wasn’t anything in the top box, not even any bees.  By this time there should have been several frames of brood.  I took the top box off and set it on the grass.  I looked into the second box and found a few bees dancing on top of the wood frame – but just a few – there should have been hundreds, thousands.  To be safe I smoked them.
I pulled up a frame in the center of the box – nothing – clean as a whistle.  Bees usually work from the middle out.  I checked the area where I left the queen and there was no evidence she had been in residence for weeks.  I pulled a frame on one side and found where drones had been born – not more than 30.  A hive needs drones but not a lot of them.  After they do their job they die to leave the lady bees build brood and take care of the little ones. 
The lack of normal bee homemaking probably explains the lack of bee foraging outside the hive.  Without a queen a bee hive cannot survive.  By the end of summer there should be 10,000 bees in a hive.  I doubt if my hive has 500 bees and they will keep dying off.
It is too late in the season, at least in Wisconsin, for the bees to recover.  My hive collapsed.  No honey this year.
The End