dead bees

[achunter]

hello everyone, i went out to my one hive after school today and there were a ton of dead bees out side of the hive, this hive started from a swarm i captured in arounddd mid july. I recently inspected it this past weekend and everything looked A okay. There were eggs brood but there was a lack of honey....do you think all the dead bees are due to starvation?? or what do you think? it was like a carpet of dead bees

[kathyp]

could be.  one way to tell is to get into the hive and see if there are bees stuck head first in cells and are dead, or very sluggish.  take a spray bottle of sugar water out with you.  spray the bees lightly.  if they perk up pretty quickly and start grooming and eating, they were probably starving.  you can load the cells with your spray bottle sugar water and then get some feed onto the hive.

this late in the year with no stores, they need to be feed heavily anyway or they have no chance to make it through winter.