The Phoenix hive is still hanging in there. Barely.

Their population is down to the single face of two frames. They have plenty of sugar candy, stored honey and pollen, but their queen still isn't laying any brood.



I don't see how they can possibly survive. Even if they survive the rest of the winter, without any new brood (or even a laying queen) there won't be any colony left.

The bees that are there now are the last ones to hatch in the fall, and they're nearing the end of their life-span.

There's no (local) queens available, and even if I introduced one the remaining colony is so small, she probably wouldn't lay any decent size brood pattern, as the existing amount of bees wouldn't be able to keep it warm.

Not knowing what to do, I just closed them back up. I'm thinking in a few more weeks we should have several strong splits from the hives at my dad's house and maybe I can move a split into the Phoenix hive and repopulate the hive.

If there's any original Phoenix bees left, I'll pinch their non-laying queen and newspaper combine them with frames of bees/brood from a split.