The Bee Queen of Amherst: The Big and Final Update--April

April 2:

I experience false hope.

I wrote:

There were 5-6 bees buzzing around, though mainly they were going in and out of the back of the hive, which is weird (the back is just a narrow slot where a mite-check tray lives--it's not connected to the main body of the hive). But still...I *think* they're my bees, which means I think that the queen must be alive. If I get an hour of warmth and no rain this weekend, I'll open up the hive and investigate.

April 6:

The President tells some kids "Bees are good!" And everything gets crazy and kind of hilarious.

April 8:

"How the Fox-Terrier was transformed into a bull dog"

April 11:

EVERYONE sent me links to the "Honey Flow" kickstarter, to support a couple of Australian guys who have invented a beehive which allows you to harvest honey without opening the hive. At present the hives are ridiculously expensive, and I have so many questions and concerns. Seems to me that it would be good, yes, to not have to disturb the bees. But on the other hand, the only way we know that the bees are happy and healthy and doing their thing, and that their homes haven't been invaded by mites or moths or disease, is by getting in there and looking. I'm skeptical. I'll wait for seasoned beekeepers to have a say in all this.

April 12: The End.

Well, that's it. They're all dead.

What you see in the first photo is what was left of the cluster, all bundled around the queen. I'm pretty sure what happened is that it just got so cold that they wouldn't leave the cluster around the queen even by a few inches to get honey--so they starved to death, even though they were surrounded by frames and frames of capped honey. You can even see some there at the corners of the photo.

If it had been a stronger hive going into the winter--if there had been more bees, that is--then maybe even with some die-off, they would have been able to keep things warm enough, and they would have been able to venture out of the cluster. As is, they didn't have a chance. The mites hitting late in the summer doomed them. This year I'll be much more careful about a pest-control program.

There were a few bees hanging around the hive today, as there have been for a few days. But they're just neighborhood bees looting the house of the dead. I propped the frames out to make it easier for them. Someone should benefit from this.

This isn't honey I can use, since it was on the hive when I did the last chemical mite treatment of the year. But I took a huge fingerful for myself, anyway. Damn it.

So sad.