Bring Out Your Dead!

As winter progresses the bee colonies die back. Those dead bodies can accumulate on the hive floor  reducing the ventilation element of the wire mesh floor and even blocking the exit so living bees can't get out. I don't imagine it's a whole lot of fun living in a house where the floor is covered with rotting corpses and doors jammed shut by more of the dead. Normally the colony will remove dead bees from the colony carrying the dead away and dropping them away from the hive, when it's too cold for flying they can't do that and the tiny corpses accumulate. Last winter seemed happy to hang about and lasted well into spring which caused a few problems for the bees including meaning they were cooped up in the hive longer than expected so there's more dead on the floor than you'd expect in a normal year.

There's probably a few ways you could remove the dead bees but possibly the easiest, quickest and least disruptive is to whip out the corpse covered floor and pop in a new one. I gather that the original National Hive floors had a slope so water could run out which also gave the floors half turn symmetry so you could just pull out the floor turn it over and put it back under the hive, that's no longer the case with open mesh floors, it's easier to make horizontal ones and it's not like water pooling is going to be a problem.

New hive floor, flat packed like Swedish furniture.

Having seen the floor of Hive1 was deep with dead bees last week I ordered a new floor from Fragile Planet. Couldn't find them cheaper anywhere else, and it included a correx board to check the mite drop. Before assembling it I treated the wooden parts to a coat of shed and fence paint. Normally I wouldn't put that stuff on surfaces the bees will come into contact with as it probably has a pesticidal component to stop bugs gnawing on your sheds and fences but I don't want the floor to rot out from under the hive.

Treated for the weather

After a look at the instructions and viewing of the online video I knocked the new floor together. The floor it was replacing has a landing board -a sloping piece of wood the bees can land on before entering the hive. I didn't really have to time to add on to this floor as I wanted to get it under the bees asap.

Hive floor ready to go in

Landing boards seem to be more for the beekeeper than the bees anyway. It gives us a chance to see what's entering and leaving the hive, and whilst the bees will use it it may be something of a liability for them often being wet, providing purchase for mice and providing a place for bees to loiter whilst wasps pick them off. On the other hand some people suggest they make the bees' return easier to the hive after foraging.

After a quick peek under the crownboard I could see the bees were taking the fondant I'd  given them the previous week. Good news. Prising them apart with a hivetool I broke the propolis seal the bees had glued the brood box to the floor with and removed the brood box with the crownboard in place.

Deep in dead bees

As you can see it was pretty deep in dead bees. So deep they were actually blocking the exit stopping the remaining bees being leaving the hive at all. To keep the exits clear over winter beekeepers usually poke a stick or a wire into the entrance and waggle it about to create a clear space but with so many dead it didn't make a difference for this hive. I moved the corpse carpeted floor onto the ground the putting the new floor on the two beams supported by breeze blocks which I call a stand I popped the brood box back on, then replaced the insulation and roof. This time last year the bees were already active and filling supers, hopefully I'll be removing the insulation next week and the bees will begin building numbers as the weather warms.

I took the floor away from the hive and gathered the dead bees into a large metal bowl. Gave the chickens some but they weren't too impressed. Then I gave the propolis a quick scrape before lighting a butane torch and scorching all the wood and the mesh of the floor. Doesn't look as pleasant as it did now but my scorching was thorough so there shouldn't be any unpleasant germs or virii in there to infect the next set of bees it comes into contact with.

A thinner layer of dead bees in Hive2

That done I repeated the procedure with Hive2. A quick look under the crownboard showed me they're working the fondant. It had an almost complete carpet of bees on the floor but it was only one bee deep and hadn't blocked the entrance this time. This colony is larger than Hive1 at the moment and the bees were more active than I'd expected so a few puffs of the smoker were called for.

Floor, landing board, reduced entrance, and dead bees.

I placed the recently scorched floor from Hive1 on the stand and put Hive2 onto that taking away it's original floor. After removing the bees I scraped and scorched the last floor before putting it away till next spring when I'll probably repeat the whole process. In case you hadn't noticed beekeepers spend a lot of time cleaning things. The dead bees I've put in a sealed bin liner for now. A mate said she could add them to her compost heap. They might attract a few wasps but it's far better than popping them in the wheely bin. If the weather continues to improve I'll be starting proper hive inspections soon.

Hope there's no queen in this lot..