The first picture is a beehive setting on the deck with more than 100 bees lay dead. This makes one wonder what is going on inside the beehive.
It’s late November and just had a record setting cold spell a week earlier. Waiting for the chance to open up and see what is on the inside. Between work and weather it turns into a waiting game.
A colony of bees could be 50,000 or more in mid-summer. The queen is laying 1,500 or more eggs daily. Worked bees live 5 to 6 weeks then comes fall. Nectar slows down and the queen begins to cut back. Bees will use up their last ounce of energy for the survival of the colony. So one last trip to forage and not make it back home. A freeze closes a door down on fall and winter sets in. With the honey in the hive, bees begin clustering on frames of honey and around the queen. Shivering to produce heat and trying to maintain 95 degrees inside of the cluster. The lifespan of bees increases through winter as their life expires still working in the survival of the colony. Bees are then removed on warm days with just enough energy to clear bodies out of the entrance then dropped.
This is mid December a warm day as temperatures rise in the low 50’s. I get a chance to open a hive for a quick look. Bees in a cluster the size of a basketball. I lift the back of the hive and still good weight. Everything looks good so I close it up and wait for the next opportunity to look again. Not much one can do at this point. Maybe a little feeding, the hive has good weight so no real reason to feed.