Denver Crew

This colony had a few surprises in the patio ceiling for us. About 10 days before the removal/relocation Frankie Bailey and I ran an infrared thermal camera on the ceiling. At the time the heat source of the bees clearly showed that the bees filled all the comb in the cavity from the corner entrance, all the way down to the end of there colony. Due to the weather, our initial date had to be rescheduled because it was just to wet and chilly. Fast forward to relocation/removal day, I could immediately see that the number of bees entering & exiting the structure had dramatically decreased. The second thing I noticed is that the infrared thermal camera picked up no heat source in the same ceiling cavity. Upon opening the ceiling cavity, there was only a handful of bees and a virgin queen. No eggs, larvae, brood, or honey but lots of comb and multiple queen cells that had hatched and a couple that had not hatched, but those didn’t appear viable. What happened in 10 days you ask? I can think of many explanations, but the one that is most likely is the hive was already in swarm mode at our initial visit. As the queens started to hatch, instead of seeking out and destroying the other queen cells, each viable queen that hatched gathered a court of bees and swarmed out of the cavity. This most likely happened repeatedly until what was left was that virgin queen and a handful of bees. All was not lost though because the comb needed to come out of the cavity anyway, and the virgin queen and her small court were introduced into a queen less colony.