Frozen Hive

All of the bees you see on this frame, despite how they're clinging to the outside of the cells, are actually dead.

When I first started this hive, they were much quieter than the other. For some reason, this particular hive was always low on nectar, pollen and larvae, no matter what I supplemented for them to eat, their numbers always stayed small and there were hardly ever any foragers returning from the field with pollen. This was always a significantly obvious difference compared to their neighboring hive which has always been very active with almost an over abundance of pollen and nectar for their size. I'm going to have to expand my more active hive once it stops raining here.

I wasn't entirely surprised to find this hive had died out over the winter, despite me giving them supplemental food whenever I could. I'm assuming that despite the food resources I provided for them, there simply weren't enough bees in the hive going into the winter to keep everything warm enough.

I have replaced this dead hive already and, again if it will stop storming here, I'll be going out to check on them this weekend.

Not every beekeeping story will end in success, but that's alright. I'm looking forward to learning how to manage this project.

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I will also admit that this project in particular is an interesting struggle for me, considering it deals with two phobias I have: Trypophobia (the fear of repeating holes) and Aichmophobia (fear of sharp objects). I have to prepare myself every time I open a hive that I'm going to conquer my fears.

I have never understood why repetitive holes make me either severely creeped out or fearful and every once in a while, slightly nauseous. Drone cells are the worst because they're usually actual circles rather than normal bee cells which are hexagons. For some reason hexagons don't bother me as much.

I've been stung multiple times before, but they were usually accidents by one or two bees. When there are over a hundred flying around me, I have difficulty sometimes making myself continue to work. Despite the tears and the fearful blabbering sometimes, I remind myself it's my duty and a goal, so I push myself through it.

Thanks to this project, I think I'm slowly working my way through the sharp objects one, but repeating patterns of circular holes or dots I haven't exactly improved on yet.

Phobias are defined as the irrational fear of something to the point that it interferes with every day life or your work. Which I find to be amusing since fear is irrational to begin with. It becomes an interesting contrast when two of them are your work.

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I have been working on this project's idea and how I want to go about it for a while. While winter and hive deaths are minor set backs I'm looking forward to this summer when I will be working with them several times per week as well as collecting water samples and running data.

#winterhive #frozen #deadoverwinter