and POOF, they're gone

When I went out to my poor performing hive to merge them with the new nuc, all the bees were gone. The comb was even more destroyed and infested with waxmoth trails, foreign larvae, and ants crawling about everywhere. I felt defeated.  I knew there was damage in this hive, but in less than 48 hours that damage spread further than I thought it would.

John said, when I called him, that it was a good thing that they left.  They probably integrated themselved into the healthy hive.  After all of the work and monitoring and anticipation, I'd been looking forward to doing a merge of the hives myself.  Oh well, maybe Mother Nature wanted to take the wheel, she does know best.

For the record, I got a photo of each frame and then when that was done I put the frames into a black plastic bag so I could put it in the freezer.  Freezing the frames will kill the larvae and if I'm lucky the bees will clean up the damaged frames and use them again. 

I also took a picture of the weak hive's feeder, it looks as though some water had seeped into places it shouldn't have been able to seep into...maybe something did leech into the water.