I researched the Bee-L archives but didn't find anything  specific to this problem.  Two hives of mine were flooded this morning when a creek backed up and flooed a part of a farm that had never been flooded before, according to the farmer.  This apparently was the remnant of the hurricane that hit Florida most recently. The water came up slowly and the hives were actually floating just above where they had been placed on cinder blocks and 4x4's, in three feet of water.   There were a lot of bees that had moved up into the supers,  awaiting rescue on the parts that remained above water.

Sad to say the brood nest was soaked, and I can't say the queens survived.  I waded out and retrieved the pieces and reassembled them on dry ground, cleaning out between a few frames here and there where there was an abundance of dead bees.  I intend to secure the hives against mice, allow them to dry out as best they can, then determine if there is at least a nuc that I could pull out to babysit over the winter (I doubt it).  With the balance of the woodenware I intend to retrive it and force air through it with a fan for a few days to dry it out, then store it over the winter and spread it out over other hives in the Spring to clean up.  The comb is good, there is some capped honey (and some uncapped) but the flood water permeated the whole mess and I would not want to extract any of it until a strong colony had spent a week or two cleaning house.

Any comments?
-Flooded in NJ

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