Vikings

Oh, my poor bees.

My poor little bees.

We've been battling together against the small hive beetles, and until today, I felt hopeful. the bees were collecting nectar, they seemed numerous and active, and they were trying their best to keep the beetles out of their space.
I've been removing brood combs one by one, inspecting them for bee larvae, beetles, and beetle larvae. There haven't been any baby bees. Today I went out to return a comb that had spent the night in the freezer to kill the beetle larvae and eggs. I asked Jordan to help so we could do it quickly with the least disruption.
When I opened the back of the hive, it was literally a battleground, littered with corpses. Carpenter ants, a wargang of them, inside the hive, battling bees. The dead lay everywhere, and I'm not sure the bees were winning, although they had mostly confined the attackers behind the follower board. We cleaned out all the ants and dead bodies we could reach.
We dusted the hive's supporting blocks with diatomaceous earth, and laid a ring of it around the base of each post.
I just did that two days ago, but it's been raining.
I returned one comb and took two more. After an hour in the freezer, scores of beetle grubs have crawled out to die. I'm going to keep the combs frozen overnight, to ensure any eggs are killed as well.
It's hard to say how many bees were lost. We found some crippled on the ground, wings and legs broken or missing.
If there is still a living queen, there may be hope. We are going to build a new hive box, with an open bottom, and re-site the hive in a sunnier place.
If the queen has perished, this hive probably won't make it. They've had such a difficult time.
Oh, the poor bees.