Death in Midwinter

January 29, 2025 / The Beekeeper

We have lost a colony. Our dear Queen Elizabeth and her bees. I noticed that they were not flying, unlike bees from the other hives, who were coming and going in the mild winter sunshine.

Their hive entrance had become restricted in size, as the cork jacket had slipped down, leaving only a small gap for bees to enter and leave. It’s possible that they were trapped inside, but I don’t think so - and actually they might have survived if they had been fully trapped. What I think happened is that bees were able to leave, and did fly out, but on returning they went into the wider and more visible door of the immediately adjacent hive of Queen Hope, rather than back into their own doorway, which was also overshadowed by a flowering branch of shrub honeysuckle. As the number of bees within Queen Elizabeth’s hive then became depleted over time, the colony shrank beyond the minimum viable size to retain warmth. They may then have perished on one of the very cold nights we had in mid-January. But this is only conjecture.

Most bees had fallen to the floor, forming a layer. How many would you estimate are there? 1000?

Queen Elizabeth’s body was immediately visible on the top. She must have been one of the last to fall.

A small number of bees remained on the frames, some with their bodies head-down in the cells.

There were still abundant stores of honey and pollen - not immediately where the bees were on the frames, but close by. There was also a small patch of sealed brood.

I transferred a couple of frames of the honeycomb into an eke on the top of Queen Flora’s hive, as that colony were highly active and I thought they might need the extra stores.

The four remaining colonies (Queen Flora, Queen Hope, Queen Kew and Queen Lily) are all alive and, as far as I can tell, well. The apiary has shrub honeysuckle and snowdrop in flower, and the bees are flying on mild days.

I wish I had noticed sooner that Queen Elizabeth’s hive doorway was compromised, and realised the significance of it. I am not sure when it happened. They were flying on Christmas Eve - but the doorway was reduced even then, as is visible from the picture in the Christmas Eve post.

More learning, the hard way.