Hello All,

We had a lovely day in the 40's today (the first since December) in Vermont, so I "popped the hood" on my hobby hives.   I lost one Carniolan hive apparently early in the season - small, split clusters, dead bees mostly in empty cells in the center of the hive, with plenty of honey further out.  There were about a hundred or so brood cells partly chewed open.  I don't see any obvious signs of disease, especially foulbrood.  This hive used to be a monster hive, but good ol' V.D. had it's way with her.  Despite two consecutive fall applications of Apistan, the population suffered, and went into winter fairly weak.

There is still about 70 lbs of honey in the hive, and lots of stored pollen. The frames of honey appear close to spoiling, having spent the bulk of the winter unattended (small amounts of mold on some of the filled comb, and the honey is starting to leak from some of the cells).  The odor of the hive is still sweet - nothing nasty.

My question is this:

This dead hive has lots of stores, pollen in particular.  Does anyone else think it wise to cannibalize the contents of the hive for use in my other hives?  In particular, I'm wondering if providing the extra frames of pollen, combined with syrup might stimulate some vigorous early brood rearing, aiming towards providing some extra splits this spring.  The hives that I would put these stores into are both Russians, and seem fairly strong, despite a hard winter and sizeable winter kills.

Thanks,

Todd.

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