Some exciting discoveries!

So, right after I published that last post, I called the bee store to see if I could get a nuc and the answer was pretty much no.  The season for even that is gone by apparently.  The bee lady told me that my best bet was either to find a beekeeper that was willing to do a split with me (basically a nuc), or find a swarm on my own.  So, unless I come across one of those things, it looks like I will be beeless until next spring :(
   But, I did find some fascinating things when I was dismantling my hive!  I was wrong, there WAS some sign of brood, I just couldn't see it without taking the hive apart because the bees had built comb in the wrong direction, effectively gluing two frames together.  I still think the queen failed, because you could see that on one frame, brood had been laid and even some cells were capped off (covered) in a very organized section:

But in other places, the brood were laid in a very scattered, random way....one of the tell tale signs of a failing queen:

There was also a large number of earwigs (EWW....perhaps the only creature on the planet I despise) in the hive.  Not sure if they do any damage, i.e. eat larvae, eat comb etc, but I can't imagine they are a helpful presence.

Then I also noticed that there were lots of little black dots on the bottom board....are these mites of sorts??  That would explain a lot if they are.....although I would have no idea what to do to prevent that in the future.

And remember I mentioned earlier on that a couple of the frames were foundationless, essentially making them into top bar frames.  Well, it turns out that they must have started building comb on that frame and for some reason did not build it straight in line with the top bar.  They built comb about 30 degrees off of parallel to the frame, making it so that they ran into neighboring frames fairly quickly.  Not sure why they went crooked, it looks like something was amiss right from the start.  Anyway, all very interesting.

There were some bees with their butts sticking out of a cell, perhaps in the middle of feeding larvae when they died.

Apparently bees die very suddenly, in the midst of an activity.  Anyway, this will bring this hive to a close.  Lots to think about.  Perhaps no more bees until next spring.  But even still, stay tuned for interesting bee factoids, articles and questions. :)

Crash and burn :(

      Well, I checked on the bees when I said I would (after a couple days of warm sunny weather), and found exactly what I was hoping not to find.  A LOT of dead bees....and no fresh brood.   I inspected the hive to try to figure out what had happened, and there was not even the smallest sign of brood.  So I assume that means that my queen failed, and quickly at that....she didn't even give it a shot that witch.  Sadly, by the time I checked on the bees and realized they were queenless, I had four days of work ahead of me, which meant I wouldn't be able to get to the store to buy a new queen until five days had passed.  I knew that at that point it would likely be too late, taking into account the huge amount of die off that had already happened. At this point, the few bees (maybe a couple hundred), that were still buzzing around, were just doing all they could to survive.  When I would remove their water feeder to add more sugar water I would find about fifty bees clutching to the feeder for dear life (literally).  I can only imagine that they were doing their best to sustain hive activities but there is not much to be done when most of the hive is full of dead bees and there is no queen.  Without a queen, the bees have no direction from their queen, and with no brood to raise, the colony will die off. So I went back the evening after my last night of work and checked on the hive.... It was as if the bees had all died in place, going about their business and then just....dead.  They were all perched on the comb and at first glance I might have even thought they were still alive, but after a second I realized that there was only silence and stillness in the hive and that all my little friends had passed.  I cried.  I wanted so badly to provide these little magnificent beings with a good home and do my little part to help sustain them, and here I am, a mere month later with an entire hive dead.  It was so sad.

     When a queen fails, if the colony is strong enough, they can make a new queen.  They choose a cell with a worker larva in it and feed it something called "Royal Jelly" (sounds quite gross if you ask me), but its very nutrient rich and helps this little larva develop all the features of a queen.  Usually when a colony is left queenless they will actually develop multiple of these cells, just to ensure they are successful in replacing their queen.  When one of the queen cells hatches they will go around and slice open the other queen cells and kill the other soon-to-be-rival-queens.  Crazy.  If you beat them to the punch, you may purchase a new queen and introduce her into the hive.  As long as the colony accepts her as their new queen, they will not try to produce a queen on their own.  Since the queen that failed never even bothered to lay any brood at all, there was nothing for the bees to work with in order to make their own queen.
    So now I have no bees.  It really stinks.  I think I might purchase a 'nuc' which is basically a portion of an already thriving hive, and they come already settled into a box with frames and such (this is my understanding anyways).  They are a bit more expensive but usually tend to succeed, as they already have a strong foundation.  My impression is that true beekeepers tend to frown on nucs, as they are seen as cheating, or a bit less purist........but clearly I am no true beekeeper, so I have nothing against them and would be happy to have a second chance this season.  Otherwise I have to wait until next spring :(
    If I do this, I'm also going to change the location of my hive so that it is not right next to the pesticide spraying strip mall that I now dislike even more than I did before (who knows if that actually had anything to do with my hive collapse, but I'm certainly going to blame them for it).

Some unanswered questions:

1) What could I have done differently to ensure that my queen was happier?  I suppose a subtopic of that is....can you do anything to make your queen happy or is it in their nature to sometimes fail?

2) I was feeding my colony with pollen patties and they didn't seem to be eating any of it.  I took this as a sign that they were finding pollen out in the world, but should I have seen this as a sign of distress?

3) The bees were not drinking any sugar water for a while and then when I noticed an increase in die off, it seemed that I was refilling their water at least once a day, is there a connection??

Things I learned:

1) Secure your frames properly and make sure your hive is truly ready for bee installation before the bees arrive (I feel that had I not meddled so much in the beginning it may have gotten them off on a better foot?)

2) Trust your gut.  When you assess your hive early on and you notice that comb is being built slowly, or inefficiently, or that there is no brood, don't attribute it to the bees "just getting settled".  Bees don't waste time when they are healthy, so when you note signs of colony sluggishness or inefficiency, then THAT is the time to find your queen.  If you find her, consider the need to kill her off and replace her with a new queen.  I'm actually glad I didn't do this (from a purely visceral standpoint) because I have an abnormally low crying threshold when it comes to suffering or death of any living thing, with the exception of humans (my crying threshold is appropriate with humans).  But back to the point....if you DON'T find your queen, get a replacement queen immediately.

3) Ask for help.  I reached out to the folks at To Bee or Not to Bee, many times and they were AMAZING.  Even though it was too late and there was nothing they could do for me, they were so supportive and helpful.  Anyone in the Denver metro area considering bees, I would point you to them without hesitation.


Final thoughts:  I feel that I failed my bees, but John continues to remind me that it is better to try and fail (and learn), than never to try at all.  And it's true.  I honestly didn't even consider the fact that my colony would fail before the first season haha.  Goes to show how much learning I have to do.  Some people don't even believe in failure (I want so badly to be one of those people), or they don't take it to heart like I do.  So in practicing this perspective, I will clean out the hive, and take my wallet and all the things I've learned, back to the bee store to try again.  

Flop? Seeking advice!

     Wellllll, I wouldn't exactly say that the girls are thriving.  They are trying so hard! But its been a rough spring for them.  We just had a fluke snowstorm (for those of you who don't live here in CO), which was sandwiched by four days of cold, hard rain.  This is a sample of some of the strange weather we have had this spring, and I can only assume that the weather has taken its toll on the girls.  After each rain, I've gone out to the hive and seen tens to hundreds of dead bees around the hive.  And then of course there was the frame fiasco that set them back in the beginning.  When I checked the hive a week ago or so I could see that the bees that had started to build some comb in between the frames and not just down the foundation.  As a result, I simply wont be able to remove and manipulate those frames.  So, at the time I had two medium boxes and this was all in the top box; so I removed the bottom box which had no bee establishment in it yet, fixed all the frames that needed reinforcement and placed it on top of the box with the fixed frames.  That way, the top box will hopefully have better frames, the bees will build correctly, and I will be able to manipulate that box a bit more.  So I've been messing with the hive quite a bit and even though I was trying to make it easier on the bees, I feel that I've been meddling a bit too much.
      Lastly, my dad pointed out that the strip mall behind my house may be spraying pesticides.  That didn't occur to me at all!  We placed the hive right against our back fence which abuts the strip mall.  I chose that location because I wanted to give my neighbors some space from the bees and the hive is right next to a lilac hedge, which I thought they would like in early spring.  BUT I did not even think about the fact that the commercial space behind us may spray their grass.
     So, as of yesterday there was very little action in the hive.  I took a quick look inside and saw comb but no brood from what I could see from that angle.  I decided I would give them a couple of sunny days to recover before I poked my nose in for a closer look.
     What I SHOULD be seeing is comb being built, brood being laid in a very organized pattern, both drone brood and worker brood, and I should obviously see the queen (although if you don't see your queen, the presence of those other things will insinuate that she is alive and well).  I'm worried that what I WILL see is a bunch of worker bees doing the best they can to survive their colony, and perhaps no queen, or a failing queen.

Any advice???  How do I save my bees???