Everything had been going just fine, I was feeding my bees, I had medicated the syrup, I had fumigated for mites. Every time I'd checked things had appeared healthy. And today when I went into one of the hives I saw complete chaos. My hive had turned into breeding grounds for waxmoth larvae.
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| Waxmoth webs |
They tunnel through the comb and defecate, essentially destroying it. They had spun their coccoons in the comb, around the comb, on the comb and in small crevices between frames.
Bees can generally clean up the comb but the frames have to be frozen to kill the larvae. That meant I had to freeze 16 of the frames that may have potential re-use value. The remaining 8 will just sit in a plastic bag through the winter.
What does all this mean? I had to dismantle the entire hive. And I hope that since it's queenless (there was no brood of any kind) that they will assimilate into the other hive because they won't have queen pheromone on them. I'm crossing my fingers here, there were a lot of homeless bees.
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| newly homeless bees, about 1/3 of what was in the dismantled hive |
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