Larry Krengel asks about the possible cause of the dead and dying brood in
his colony.  His description is very good, just what I like to hear from an
observer.  The colony is also diminishing in strength.  One bit of
information Larry could have supplied would have been whether both of his
colonies were started this spring.

I think Dave Green is headed in the right direction with his reply.  He
suspects "weak stock."  I would also ask Larry to observe whether there is a
queen retinue around the queen when she stops on the comb face or whether
they ignore the queen, and whether the bees evenly cluster over the brood
rearing area or whether they run off the comb or seem to be listless,
whether they are quiet or noisy.  I have seen these same symptoms since 1969
in bee hives.

My explanation is as follows:
1.  The queen is not producing the pheromones necessary to cause the proper
worker bee behavior,
2.  The workers will not form a queen retinue but rather ignore her,
3.  The colony will be "noisy"  (making a queenless noise from 60 to 85
decibels) for some indeterminate period until they become listless then
silent,
4.  The lack of pheromone means the bees are not stimulated to feed brood,
(and maybe the brood is not producing the pheromone that triggers nurse bee
feeding behavior) thus the dead and dying brood at various ages, and the
spotty brood pattern,
5.  The queen's genetics is poor i.e.. from inbred stock.

My recommendations in the following order:
1.    Order or obtain a new queen.
2.    Feed her and the attendants with Fumidil-B in water for two days.
3.    Add two or three frames of only emerging brood and young bees from
your other colony to the weak colony.
4.    Then find the current queen and kill her by crushing her on the screen
of the new queen cage.  Leave the queen's remains on the screen or let them
drop into the open hive.
5.    Insert the cage down between the center combs of the single story hive
(10 or less combs of bees); or up between the combs of the second story if
the colony is 15 or more combs of bees.
6.    Go back in three to five days to see if you see fresh eggs and remove
the queen cage.  Be sure the queen has exited the cage before you remove the
cage.

Or, depending on the length of your honey flow and whether the bees can
store enough honey for winter, pinch the queen, throw her out of the hive
and combine the colony with your other hive.  Next spring split the
remaining colony to get your second hive.

James C. Bach
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