What happened????

I went into the hive on Saturday Oct 9 to do a status check. I have been seeing far fewer bees flying in and out of the hive and I was beginning to get worried.

My worst fears were true ... No sign of the queen, only a few capped brood (for all intents and purposes, there were no brood), no eggs, no larvae, looks like plenty of pollen being packed, lots of honey waiting to be set, lots of wax capped honey, but very few bees - at least to what I had been experiencing all year to date. I don't believe they swarmed on me, otherwise I would expect to be seeing some sort of replacement queen, eggs, larvae, and plenty of worker bees. My guess is that somehow, the queen has died (could it have been my heavy hand when doing the sugar dusting?, particularly the first time when I separated the deeps and sugar dusted each one? I don't know, doubt I ever will. The immediate problem is that I see this hive dwindling down in resources, and no queen to keep laying to build up the hive. What to do? I'll try to reach Bob, my mentor and see what he thinks ... In the meantime, I will add the top feeder back in place, and put some sugar syrup on there along with some Honey Be Healthy medication.


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