Last week I blogged about seeing the Phoenix hive down to less than two frames of bees and still no brood from the queen.

Shortly after publishing the post my friend over at Simply Resourceful suggested newspaper combining the remaining bees with another colony.

That was my goal today: to newspaper combine the hive with the Blue/Purple hive that was thriving. At least that was my plan until I opened the Phoenix hive up and saw this:



Yup- what was two frames of bees last week, was now less than 20 bees and a very sorry looking queen.

I saw one (and sometimes two) bees standing on or walking over the top of the queen as if she wasn't even there. 

I looked closely at the remaining bees and almost half of them had mites on them. Even though I did powder sugar dusting regularly last season to combat mites, I'm convinced the mites is what ultimately brought this hive to being so weak. 

I pinched the queen and then decided not to even combine them with the remaining hive. In the big picture, 20 bees isn't even "a drop in the bucket" and they were loaded with mites as well.

I shook them out and took the boxes and frames to the house to clean up and store.



The remaining hive is the Blue/Purple hive, and they seem to be in good health and will make it through the rest of the winter just fine.

I think the Phoenix hive was cursed. Seriously. The history of the Phoenix hive is long and paints a grim picture.

I'm going to give it a fresh coat of paint, and a new name.

Any ideas for a new color/name?