Hi all, The storm we had over the weekend and accompanying intense winds decimated my colonies and hives. Does anyone still have packages/nucs/queens or even a caught swarm for sale that I might snag and try to rebuild so I can at least some bees this year?

I checked my colonies today and both are lacking brood and queens. I'd split one from the other three weeks ago. The source hive was thriving and had plenty of queen cups and brood. This is the first I've bothered them in three weeks to give time for the queens to emerge, duke it out, and mate. I am worried that if I wait any longer, I'll lose both colonies.

I started beekeeping with all mediums, but to keep my brood chambers larger and separate from the boxes I use for supers, I'd like to switch to deep brood boxes. I attempted to move half of the medium frames to to deep box accompanied by five deeps this past fall, but the colony never attempted to build out the deep frames. I am afraid to block the queen in only on the deep box with no place to lay in fear of damaging the health of the hive, but this seems to be the only option to get them to build it out. Thoughts?

After placing miteaway strips last fall, I had hundreds of dead larva and bees strewn all around my hive, mostly underneath where they had tossed out the larva. That colony never recovered and did not survive the winter. The colony seemed healthy and thriving prior to the mite treatment though. Is it possible I killed them by treating them?

I have only two colonies on my roof, and I lost one of them this winter. The second hive, despite this weird weather we've had, seems very strong and has been doing quite well. I decided to an inspection today as there was little to no wind and the temperature was up near 70 for a bit in the afternoon. I have four mediums as the hive. Upon pulling out a few frames from the top super I noticed that there were a lot of drone cells, including multiple that had been between the frame and the box below that I'd ripped open by removing the frame. I saw that there were eggs in the cells, and only solitary eggs, which leads me to believe that I have a drone laying queen rather than egg laying workers. Because I don't have another hive to work with, I am looking to understand the best options for remedying this situation. From what I've seen, merging the hive with a nuc seems to be the most successful option, but I'd love suggestions. Thanks,