what went wrong

[lee]

an old man that my son knows gave him an old hive. we put it in the back yard. on the days the sun came out so did the bees. then it got real cold again. for about a week. then we had some warm days. and no bees came out so i look inside .this is what found .

Code fixed by Beemaster

[Finsky]

I have had same results, but I do not know what is the reason.

In these cases bees starts to come out at autumn and it continues all winter. At spring I have twist size colony.  At autumn it was 2 box hive.

[Phoenix]

There could be many reasons...  But this is the main reason we don't buy hives in the fall or winter, you have no idea what preceeded the winter.  We have no idea what actions were taken to medicate the hive, what precautions were taken, did they have tracheal mites or varroa mites?  At least when we purchase a hive in the summer we know what the condition of the colony is in when they cluster.

I was a little concerned when I read your first few posts and realized that you had acquired this hive in the middle of winter.  Winter is when the bees are clustered up to keep warm, you should never inspect them when the temps. are below 45 degrees, it takes away from their heat they have generated in their cluster.  If the queen gets chilled, she may never lay again, and the colony numbers will dwindle, the colony won't even be able to supercede her because she can't lay a fertilized egg.  The more stable the internal temps. are the better off the colony will be throughout the winter.

Look at it this way...  At least you have plenty of drawn comb to start another colony, and you will know what state or condition they are in when winter sets in next year.

[Finsky]

Oh now I remember one reason to this phenomenom.

During a couple of years I feeded at autumn too much sugar liquid and they were not able to cap all in cold parts of hives. So winter food begin to ferment and bees try to eat it. Big healthy hives become sick and come out during winter.  It is easy to see when food bursted out from combs in edge frames. Also they may leave uncapped food in upper parts if brood are in lower box and winter ball there down.

[icra]

To cold for the hive, they die in the bee-ball. How was the warming made in the hive?   And you have to feed them you have to put in the hive a honey-caky

[Robo]

It looks to me like something caused a reduction of health bees to the point that the cluster was not big enough to keep warm or move to more stores.

It is hard to tell by the photos, but are there dark brown feces stains on the frames and supers (some photos look like it, others look like propolis)?  If so, chances are it is dysentery/nosema that stressed them to this level.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but what type of mite prevention did you use?

Check the bottom board for dead varroa mites,  it will be quite evident if the varroa population was significant enough to be the cause.

[Anonymous]

One thing can be said for sure that there wasn't honey close to the cluster.
  Al

[Finsky]

Check the bottom board for dead varroa mites,  it will be quite evident if the varroa population was significant enough to be the cause.

It may be the reason if the owner have not done nothing with mites.

If there is apistan resistant miten population, so it happens to hive even if you give strips.

Who knows. There is many reasons, and nothing has gone wrong. Some things are just normal.

That is not normal that everything goes all right!

[Anonymous]

Lee, I just returned from the ANR weekend beekeeping classes at MSU and believe me you are not alone in loosing bees this year.
I have lost two of five and felt bad about it. One fellow lost 24 of 25 in one yard another lost 56 of 75 and one fellow was real upset to have lost one since that was all he has lost in ten years he said.
Most say Mites were the cause, some vorrna some trec.
I believe one I lost to moisture and another be cause it was just to small to start winter with.
  Al

[lee]

thinks for the info....i found mites in the hive they had nosema to. these was old hives that had not been taken care of for a long.