Have had what is probably a major set back with my bees. I never thought keeping bees would be easy, but I didn’t realise how emotionally attached I would become to them.
I’d been watching my bees through the window for a few weeks now and had been concerned that they didn’t seem to be building any more comb.
Having consulted some beeks (beekeepers) that know about these things the consensus was that was normal.
I watched at the entrance and could see bees flying in and out with pollen and nectar and everything else looked fine, so I put my worries aside and continued to watch.
There were loads of bees in there and although they didn’t seem to be moving or doing much, I left them alone, waiting for a warm sunny day to open the hive and have a good look.
With all the wet weather it was a while before the right conditions arrived and when I did look inside I was in for a shock. There were thousands of bees in there all hanging off the eight honeycombs they had built but there wasn’t a drop of honey in there.
What’s more there were no new eggs, no bee larvae and no capped bees.
My bees were starving!
I couldn’t see the Queen though to be honest I was so shocked I probably didn’t look properly. If she was there she had stopped laying and there was no food to feed any babies anyway.
I thought at first something; maybe wasps had robbed the honey from the hive. But as I check them three times a day and had only seen the odd wasp, this was unlikely.
They had just used up what they had feeding their brood and had no energy left to go and get more.
