Pieces of bee's

[Overreved]

I pulled the bottom insert and there are small pieces of bee's. What would do this. Its winter here in the Northeast so Im not going to open the hive up. Any ideas.

[Dallasbeek]

Bees die.  Bees lose body parts.  Don't worry unless it's a LOT of bee parts.

[BeeMaster2]

Ditto what Dallas sain. I find little body parts in my oil trays also.
Jim

[Acebird]

Where in the northeast?  I have quite a few body parts in front of both hives.  This can happen when we get a heat wave in the middle of winter.  The hive can break cluster, relieve themselves and do house cleaning.  It may not be warm enough to take the parts a distance away from the hive but they at least get the junk out of the hive.  In the course of a 4-5 month winter there will be thousands of bees dying normally.  That is why the new bees in the fall are so important.

[Overreved]

we are in Fairfax Vermont, it was nice yesterday and they were out in full force on cleansing flights.

[Acebird]

Same here.  Put that location in your profile so you don't keep getting asked.

[Hops Brewster]

Don't look too closely.  You may find bee parts in your honey, too.

[AR Beekeeper]

If the bee parts are parts of white pupa that have been chewed off the developing pupa, this means the queen is laying brood and the brood is infested with varroa mites.  The bees know there is a mite reproducing in the cell and they chew away the pupa to remove the foundress mite and her young.  This is called Varroa Sensitive Hygiene (VSH) and is desirable trait to have in your bees.

If the parts you see are things like legs, wings, or other parts of adult bees it is as has already been posted, normal for a colony.

[beepro]

It could be that these body parts are from the young bees.
If they don't have enough adult bees to cover the developing broods at night time then
these might be the dead bees they are pulling out.   As long as the hive population holds then
everything will be fine once Spring is here.    From the description of it they are doing very well.

[Acebird]

I am pretty darn sure he is not seeing any pupa in Fairfax VT in January.  I could be wrong.

[AR Beekeeper]

I don't know when they usually have their start of brood production in Vermont, I saw on another forum where a poster in New York had colonies that have started already.  My colonies have a small amount of brood almost all winter.

When Overreved, or others, see white pieces of pupa on the sticky boards they will know what is possibly happening in their colony.

[beepro]

Ace, with the daylight hours extending now everyday the bees reacted with sending out new broods.
This depends on how strong a colony is.  The Russian beekeeper that I bought my 10 frame of bees from has hives that
expanded into 3 deep now.    They don't care as long as there is food and a warm hive environment with a strong hive they
will expand.   Every year for the last 6 seasons, February is the critical turning point for my hives here.   Mine already munching on
the patty subs and sugar bricks because they are expanding too fast now.

[Acebird]

The Russian beekeeper that I bought my 10 frame of bees from has hives that
expanded into 3 deep now.

There is no doubt that the Russian beekeeper has figured it out.  There is only two questions to ask.  Will he tell you what he is doing?  And will you listen?  My guess is he will tell you but you won't listen.  So I am pretty sure how this is going to end.

[beepro]

This is his little secret, Ace.   He will not let me in to his little bee secret.  I took the 2 deep home that day and got
pics of the boxes he is using to grow the bees.   He did mentioned about caging the queen and let the bees make those
QCs.   Other than that he did not give that much infos about his method.   

Since he caged the queen, I have no issue of direct releasing her on hiving and gave him back the boxes the next day that he will not sell.
Doesn't matter since I got some of his box secret already.

[Acebird]

Well you found the one in a million beekeeper that will not tell you everything they do if you are willing to listen.  That is amazing.

[tjc1]

If you have a screened bottom board then you will only see the bits of bees on the board that can sift through the screen that have fallen off the dead bees lying on the screen...