Cleaning bees dying

[vadentwin]

I pulled 5 frames of fall honey yesterday and extracted them. I put the extracted frames out for the bees to clean up. I have done this in past and every time I do there seem to be a high number of dead bees in the capping dust at the bottom. They do go a bit crazy for a while cleaning these but not too much visible aggression. I only have 3.5 hives right now down from a high of 7 due to recent sells. Anyone else see this? Any ideas?

Picture attached.

[doggoner]

Possibly robbing because of the honey smell?

doggoner

[vadentwin]

These are frames I extracted and put in a box with no lid about 50ft from my hives. There were 1000s of bees on these frames cleaning them up.  I put the box on a lid and the picture is from when I lifted the box off the lid. i am assuming most are my bees but I am sure some local bees joined the feast.

[Rojodiablo]

Two things: 1. They drown. They get in there, get stuck as hell, can't get cleaned up enough to fly, then slowly tear up wings, legs and they are done for. 2. They just die..... natural causes. I'll wager this is 1,2% of the dead in the bottom of the cleanout bins. the other 98% drown.

[vadentwin]

That makes sense. These frames were only there for a few hours so I think 1 is more likely. I just never heard this mentioned in the videos I have watch about bees cleaning frames.  I wonder if I put these back in a hive if the dead count would be as high. It would be harder to tell because they tend to haul the dead off quickly.

[Rojodiablo]

I bet fewer would die, as they would not be able to pile on three bees deep on the frame. I saw a couple of my frames getting cleaned up when it was hot and not a lot of food about; boy, they mugged those frames. And it looked like some fighting was going on, too.

[linuxman51]

they do fight when cleaning up extracted frames. wasps show up and other stuff too. I figured some attrition was par for the course. some folks do put the frames back on hives after the fact, but I'd be concerned that it might kick off a robbing frenzy if it happened during a sho-nuff dearth