For the past couple of weeks, we'd been concerned that there wasn't much activity happening at the entrance to Peach, the hive with a queen from Georgia.  But I hefted the hive and nearly broke my back - so I knew they had enough honey stores to make it through spring (with concern, in fact, that they'd have too much!).  Compared to their sister hive, Cream, Peach just wasn't active enough.  Eventually, we stopped seeing bees come and go from the hive's entrance altogether.  And then it was quiet.  And we knew.

     Upon inspection today, Peach remained quiet, and when I popped the lid, I was certain.  Of the three supers it had, the top one was filled to the brim with honey stores.  So they hadn't starved.  No moisture in the hive means they had good airflow, so they probably didn't freeze (in the traditional way).  But in the second super is where we saw the cluster: dead in place and just about the size of a softball ...when it should have been bigger than a football.  This colony was too small to survive even above-freezing temps. 

Above photos: the cluster frozen in place.

     Going frame by frame, we investigated to see if there were any signs of disease (there were none), or swarm/supercedure cells, which are created when the hive needs to make a new queen either in preparation for a swarm, or when a hive is queenless (none of those either).  Then we had to break apart the cluster and get to the grisly work of cleaning out dead bees. 

     But in the center of the cluster, we found something extraordinary: a queen cell.  The bees had instinctively clustered around the cell, which tells me she hadn't hatched yet.  They were doing everything they could to keep her warm - after all, a hive can't survive without their queen.  Just inside was a gnarly little half-developed queen bee ...confirming my suspicion. 

     It appears that Peach, our "strong" hive, had been so strong late this winter that they prematurely swarmed.  When a colony swarms, half of the bees leave with the old queen, seeking out new housing.  The half of the colony that remains makes a new queen from an egg their old queen laid, which would explain the cell.  It looks like Peach swarmed too early, leaving too few bees to withstand the cool temperatures.  They just didn't have the numbers to stay warm.  Chances are, the swarm died somewhere out there too.

     It's a hard lesson for this new beekeeper, but I take solace in the fact that it was out of my control and when we could do something, we did everything right.  I mean, everything.  They had plenty of food, mouse guards and ventilation.  But like a Greek tragedy, in the end, their strength was their weakness. 

     Thank you, honeybees, for your hard work, endless dedication and invaluable lessons.  Rest in peace, Georgia Peach.

We lost one of our hives in mid January, a huge well populated and aggressive hive but one that we never re-queened. One day they were flying all around in 60 degree weather and eating their honey and pollen paddies and then over the next week they died off over a period of 7 or 8 days., many leaving the hive and falling to the ground outside but most just falling to the bottom. There must have been about 20,000 bees or more dead in a pile with the queen right in the middle and a bunch of drones in there as well. Sheesh.  I can't figure out what happened. There was a fair amount of capped brood for the time of year and a full medium of honey. There were no signs of disease that were visually apparent. There were not a lot of mites either. Maybe they couldn't deal with the extreme fluctuations in temperature that week. It was 60 degrees one day and 14 degrees the next night. But I would have thought with the large population they would have been able to deal with the weather. But they were from Georgia and we never were able to re-queen that hive. It's odd that they started leaving the hive and piling up outside the entrance.

The dead hive is on the left with the bees piled outside the entrance.