Bad Day

Yesterday, my family opened the hive. We checked to see if the bees were alive. There were none alive. We had to clean out the hive and we got a lot of honey. We buried the bees on the edge of my ravine behind my house.

I felt very very sad when I saw all of those dead bees. Some of the bees on the top were actually moldy. I think the cold weather and the moisture in March killed them. We saw a lot of eggs from the Queen. We tried to look for her, but we couldn't find her.

We cleared out the hive by taking out all the honeycomb and dead bees. We left some of the honeycomb in big bowls in the yard. The good news is I saw a ton of honeybees today on the honeycomb. I had to watch where I stepped because there were so many--I might have gotten stung if I had stepped on one. The bees will take that honey back to their hives. It will go to good use. They might be wild bees. We're hoping that some bees will move in during swarming season in late May. This is how they swarm: they split up the hive and they move. The queen takes one half and guides them.

We learned a lot by losing those poor bees.