In this instructional video, Laurence Edwards examines two nucleus colonies that were created simultaneously with identical queens, brood, bees, and feed. One colony is thriving, while the other is dead. Edwards walks the viewer through a visual inspection of both hives, noting entrance wheel conditions, internal clustering, and moisture control. He identifies severe dysentery (fecal deposits on entrance wheels and frames) in the failing colony and discusses the likely involvement of Nosema, though he does not perform a microscope confirmation. Further investigation reveals additional problems: a poorly mated or drone‑laying queen and a mix of capped and uncapped stores, indicating poor colony health. Edwards concludes that the dead colony poses a disease risk and outlines a comprehensive response: quarantine, removal of frames, melting down honey, sterilizing wax and equipment (including a detailed method using a 200‑liter drum), and reusing sanitized frames. Throughout, he emphasizes transparency about colony loss, the importance of early detection, and practical steps for beekeepers to prevent spread of disease.
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In this video, I'm going to talk to you about two nucleus colonies—one that's thriving, one that's dead. As always on this channel, I don't shy away from the fact that some colonies will die. I don't cover it up. I talk to you about it, and I try and analyze why that colony is dead. It's useful for me. Hopefully, it's useful for you. In this video though, we've got 2 nucleus colonies made up at the same time of the year, made up with the same queens, the same amount of brood, the same amount of bees, the same amount of feed. Do you kind of get where I'm coming from? These are 2 identical colonies, pretty much. One of them's thriving, pretty much filling up that box now. One of them's dead. Not gonna pull out any frames, but we'll get in, we'll take the covers off, we'll look in from the top, and then we'll do an autopsy on this colony here. This video is not a drone laying queen failure. Something a little bit sinister is going on inside. We're going to take a really good in-depth look into that. So this is the colony that's looking really good. It's about 6 or 7 degrees here today. The bees have come out and they're saying hello, and the entrance wheel looks reasonably okay. You'll see why I talk about that, because when you go to see the other entrance wheel, it doesn't look so good. I've got a little bit of feces on there. But there's not that much and it's not a terrible color, so I'm not reading into it too much. What I can see though is activity on the entrance wheel, so I'm hoping when we look inside we're gonna see a decent amount of bees. So you'll notice on here as well, I've got a couple of pieces of insulation on here. We've done this on a separate video. I'm just gonna take those bits of insulation off. It really helps keep the moisture down and mean it doesn't drip on top of that cluster. So you can see from the top there, reasonable-sized cluster. And as we've spoken about previously up here, the nucs in this apiary were made up very late in the season, around the middle of September, which is very, very late. So although I'd like to see them bigger, filling up over there, this one here is doing really well. And for first week of February, this is a good size nucleus. Very happy with this indeed. Don't need to do anything else other than give it a little bit of a heft. It's feeling heavy, doesn't need fondant, this one. You can see the condensation building up as soon as I've taken that roof off. The bees are looking good though. I'm gonna leave these alone. We've got one healthy, thriving colony. Right, let's go and take a look at the colony that's not looking so good, starting off with the entrance wheel. So even from far away you can see it. Look at the state of that entrance wheel. That is not what we want to see. Feces all over it, splattery feces as well. Look at that trail. These bees have got the runs. Never a good sign for the bees to have such a bad case of dysentery, especially this time of the year. Whenever I see this on a colony, I always get really worried, and I would say 9 times out of 10 they don't make it through the winter. And even if they do make it through the winter, they really fail to take Take off. Let's take a look inside, see what they're looking like. Right, doesn't look good, does it? Not a lot of action on this nuc at all. Let's get the COVID off, see what we can see. So you can immediately see from the frames, obviously no bees, little cluster of dead bees down there. Really, really bad case of dysentery. You can see it on the tops of the frames. We've seen it in front of the hive as well. Got a few slugs taking us for a bit of a ride, but I wouldn't read anything into that. This colony here is not in a good way. Let's get in, pull out some frames. So beekeeping is never ever straightforward. I've gone into this colony here thinking there's a really bad case of dysentery, potentially Nosema as well. Obviously you can have dysentery without it being Nosema, but you rarely get a bad case of Nosema without signs of dysentery. The only way to prove that it's Nosema is to get it under a microscope, but to be honest, I don't bother doing that because I'll just treat it as if it is, and I'll talk to you a little bit at the end of this video as to what I'm going to do with these leftover frames. However, the plot does thicken a little bit. You look along here, very bad case of dysentery. What do you think killed this colony here? Was it Nosema? Was it the fact they just weren't very well? Are they eating something that's really put them off? Or is there something else going on. Just looking again here, this is a classic sign of dysentery when you see it across the frames here. The bees weren't well and they had dysentery, we can definitely say that. I don't think that's what's killed this colony. There's a couple of other little clues on this frame here to tell you what was going wrong. You've got capped stores over there and you've got a lot of uncapped stores. As I said before, whenever the feeders aren't empty or the frames aren't fully capped over, I always get a little bit worried. In this case, the feeder was emptied, but along the frames there's quite a lot of open stores. You look inside the beehive here, again, very, very bad dysentery on the walls. Without a doubt, there was something wrong with this colony. But let's take a look at some of the other frames as well and see if we can see anything else. And there we have it. It was not just Dysentery that killed this colony. There is a poorly mated queen involved as well. Is it a late season supersedure? Must be something like that. Or did the queen just run out of the good stuff and turn drone laying? Could be that as well. This does happen, unfortunately. This is just what happens with bees. Queen mating is not an exact science, and sometimes they look booming going into winter, as all of the nucs did up here. Every single nuc in this apiary Had 6 frames of bees going into winter and they looked healthy. And then this one here, they've turned drone laying, they've got a bad case of dysentery, and they have died. So what are we going to do with this colony then? They're clearly dead, they've clearly got dysentery, and they probably died as well because there was a drone laying queen. Would they have survived if there wasn't a drone laying queen in there? I don't know. And did the fact that there was a drone laying queen in there contribute to the dysentery that we're seeing? Which meant that the bees couldn't maintain temperature, so they were less likely to fly out and go and do their number 2 somewhere else. I reckon even with a fully mated queen in there, something was going wrong. What I'm going to tell you now is what I would do with a nucleus colony like this, because this is a disease risk. Whatever anybody says, this really can spread disease. If that's got Nosema in there, it's got honey in there, the bees are going to go in, they're going to rob that out, And then we're in big, big trouble. So all I'm gonna do here, I'm just gonna close that colony up and I'm gonna go and take it somewhere where the bees can't rob it. In a big batch early on in the season, I'll take those frames out, I'll melt them completely down, I'll recover the wax. Obviously we don't wanna touch that honey for human consumption. Definitely don't wanna touch it for bee consumption either. But the wax in there is reusable. And once you've sterilized the frames, you can reuse the frames. And then in order to reuse that box as well, you need to sterilize that box. If you want to see another video on me sterilizing poly equipment like this, because it can be a little bit difficult, check out this video here where I sterilize using a big 200-liter drum.
