The Colony Has Collapsed

We walked outside the side door of our home Saturday morning and immediately noticed a funny smell.  It was kind of sweet, but mainly smelled like something was spoiled, molded or mildewed. We looked around to find the source of the foul odor and it didn't take us long to find it.  There was a black, sticky substance oozing from the bottom of the column on the side porch.

Tricia reached her hand and swept a finger through the substance and looked at it closer.  Honey. This column is home to our colony of bees that have lived here for the past 3 or 4 years, maybe longer.  At night when they calm down, you can stand outside, and put your had on the column and listen.  There is so much buzzing with all the bees inside the column, it is as if the whole thing is vibrating.

Substance oozing out of the column

Here is a little bit of a closer look at the sticky, stinky substance.  As you might imagine, it was attracting ants and plenty of them.

So what's going on here?  I can't say I'm really sure.  If you look at the top of the column, there are normally bees spilling out of the top or you can see numerous bees flying in and out of the column. I'm sure that the entire column is filled with honeycomb.  The trouble is there are just one or two bees flying in or out.

I'm not a beekeeper, nor will I pretend to know anything about them.  Because the bees aren't in a traditional beebox, we've not been able to rob a drop of honey.  We just enjoy them living in there because they do a great job of pollinating all of our fruit trees and the garden.  If I had to guess, I'm assuming that maybe they ran out of room in the column and moved out to find a new larger house since they outgrew their "starter home."  That would explain the few bees I still see flying.  Perhaps they are just going in to eat the honey.

Worst case scenario is that the colony has collapsed and died.  We do have mosquito trucks that drive around weekly spraying pesticide to kill mosquitoes. I've heard that this pesticide can kill bees, too, although I'm not certain.

No more bees!

This is not good news.  We enjoyed having the bees even though we didn't get any honey.  I'll wait for a short time to see if a new colony moves into the column, but if they don't, I'll need to remove the column, lay it on it's side and use a pressure washer to remove the honeycomb/honey.  I've heard that if you don't remove the abandoned honeycomb and honey, it will attract all sorts of varmints and vermin like roaches, mice, and rats that come around to eat the honeycomb and honey.

If that is the case, I'll also talk to a couple of beekeeper buddies of mine to see if they can put one of their beeboxes full of bees in the backyard.  I don't want to get into the beekeeping business, but I do want to have some bees around the house.