To be honest, I have to say I'm a little depressed about the state of some of the hives I've seen lately. For some there's a consolation if you have three hives and one is strong and healthy. It's still sad to lose the other two.
One of our beekeepers has two hives. One has a fifty fifty chance of making it. The other has European Foulbrood and has zero chance. Few bees, spotty, capped brood opened up by the bees, yellowed larva or "mush". I would suggest it's a waste to feed such a colony. They don't have winter bees.
One of the people I've been "helping" has zero out of two colonies. We requeened one of those colonies twice and the other three times.
I hope yours are doing better. Share your good news. I have five colonies. The four in the apimaye hives are really strong. Lots of bees, almost enough food, and low varroa counts. Instead of doing an alcohol wash, I just did an oxalic treatment and checked the drop. It was very low. 15 or less for the whole colony, mostly much less than that. So you can imagine how bummed I'm going to be if they don't make it through the winter.
My wooden hive probably has a fifty-fifty chance of making it. I've already wrapped it because the nights are going down to the low forties. I have to merge frames of bees from a queenless nuc into it this week.
That nuc has been making supercedure cells for a month which I have been removing. It seemed too late for a queen to be born and go out and get successfully mated. Now there is no queen in the nuc. They were even still making drone brood. It's amazing they still have drones but to be making drone brood (alongside of worker brood), well I don't get it. So I'll merge about ten frames of bees into my wooden colony and hope for the best.
A few of us are going up to the Washington State Beekeepers Conference this week-end. The speakers and subjects are most interesting. One of the topics is on dead-outs. I hope we'll come back knowing more about European Foulbrood. Another topic is on drones. I'll ask about my fall drone brood. Actually I have quite a long list of questions... I am hoping someone will tell us what those black "bees" are in Rick Steel's colony. Nonda Zwald has them, too.
Beekeeping is so challenging. I'm glad we have each other to connect, grow and share info. The moral support doesn't hurt either. Share your questions and thoughts.