Colony Collapse!

'Tis the season for hive disasters.

Two years ago, Yellow hive lost its queen in the middle of summer. It took them a month to produce a new queen, but by then it was too late to build the colony up enough to survive the winter.

This year, it's White hive's turn to go down the tubes. It startes with a sky-high varroa mite count in mid-July.  Within a week or so, the population crashed to a quarter of what it had been. 

The the small hive beetles moved in.

Small hive beetles are, as the name suggests, small black beetles that live inside the hive. The adults are pests that the bees can keep in check normally.

The real problem with hive beetles is their offspring, which hatch in the honecombs and then tear through the hive's food supply -- pollen and honey. In the process, they cover everything in "slime -- basically, honey and their leavings. And I mean everything.

The only solution was to dismantle White hive, freeze the frames to kill the mite larvae, then clean the frames. In between, I feed the larvae to our chickens and let the bees reclaim the undamaged honey. I'm planning to scrap off the comb and melt it with the rest of my beeswax from this year. 

In thr meantime, I have hit "reset" on White hive in hope of recovering them enough to make it through winter. Fingers crossed.