where my bees at?

you're not going to believe it. my bees are gone! that's right. gone. they must have swarmed, the little bastards!

so here's the story. 1 1/2 weeks ago my parents were here and we checked the hive. see?



and, for the most part everything looked pretty good. my only concern was that they weren't really working as fast as i thought they should've been. there were still about 4 frames that had no comb built yet. i wasn't sure if it was a result of the poor weather of late (rain), or if they were bored, or what. i was curious if i should add the super* on there to give them something to work towards. but i wasn't quite sure. so i emailed my beekeeper friend and he told me not to worry. just add some food and he felt like it would be fine. so i did that. then i was away for 6 days** so i didn't check on them last week. i got back late saturday night and i've either been busy or it's been raining ever since i got back. when i walked by the hive it seemed pretty quite outside, but i figured it was just the weather. but when i came home tonight the weather was beautiful and the hive was completely silent. so i opened the outer cover and all i saw were little worms. so i suited up (just to be safe) and me and baldman went out there. and sure enough, they're totally gone. no dead bees, so they must've swarmed. but lots of worms, which i'm assuming are wax moth larvae which will take advantage of unattended wax to lay their larvae and eggs.

so, yea, sucky.

*a super is the next layer of frames for the bees to continue to build on.

**i promise i'll post about my trip soon. i have loaded the pictures at flickr if you want to see them. (but you have to look at them in the album and not in the photostream because they're all out of order otherwise.)