The snow outside the swarm colony’s hive’s box was littered yesterday with dead bees. I think this is normal, although there were very few bodies in the snow outside the weaker colony. I wonder if there are any bees left living in the weaker group.

The weather warmed up a bit yesterday, and when I visited the hives, I saw a couple of girls flying about. That made me happy…but all the dead bees spotting the snow was somewhat unsettling.

There’s a lot of trash on the bottom board of the hive box, too…some of it is dead bees and some of it is broken bits of comb. I think the living bees are supposed to remove the dead, because bees are fastidious about their living quarters. I guess they won’t work much until it significantly warms up, though, because they do not want to “break cluster.”

As I understand it, in this cold weather, they all cluster around the queen…it’s warmer this way. They resist breaking cluster…even to find food or to drink sugar water left at their doorstep. So, as the weather warms this week, I hope they’ll start eating and cleaning up.