Hive 4/ Betsy’s Bees is Dead

Our most aggressive hive has died.  I will not miss working them, but it is always sad to lose a hive.

Remember the disaster when we added the third deep super under them? Which is when we found out how aggressive they were.  We ultimately decided to move them, over the Summer, to our apiary in the Black Forest.

However, I do not believe their new location had anything to do with their demise. One of the interesting things about Betsy’s Bees, is they literally had three frames of honey to the left of the cluster, and about nine frames of honey in the deep super underneath them. Apparently, the weather was continually cold, which wouldn’t allow the cluster to move towards the honey around them.

Although, the weather does not explain why they stored the majority of their honey underneath them. This is not typical and upside down. Honey bees are hoarders by nature, and usually store all extra honey stores above them, where it is easily accessible to them in the Winter. This is our first case where the honey was stored underneath the brood/cluster. Of course, if I would have pulled the deep supers apart in the Fall, I would have noticed this upside-downness and done something about it. However, it was hard to motivate myself to work these ladies due to their wanting to kiss me.

In addition, we really don’t like to mess with our hives too much.  The bees know what to do and have reasoning behind their madness. Ultimately, even if I had, that’s not a guarantee that they would have survived their first winter.