Dang it!
Winds gusted up to 64 mph today… temperature around 43 degrees.
Got a call from my Son-In-Law that he couldn’t see the tall hive from his house (an emergency combine to our “Feral” hive, perhaps a bit too tall to go into winter, but this is what we had to do).
Went to look and it was toppled over but mainly intact; (the left-most, tallest one in the picture).
Vivaldi board was off and about 4 frames lay on the ground; various piles of live, dead, freezing, wet bees.
Did our best to work quickly; didn’t see the queen in the piles; hopefully she was still inside of the lower inside of the hive, and didn’t get crushed
Put it back to upright, and strapped it to blocks underneath (8 cinder block base), so it should be bottom-heavy enough to no topple over…
A small number of bees were “hitting” as we tried to raise it back to upright; they were agitated, but due to the cold and wind, were not able to do much…. but the brave ones still tried
Probably my fault, cause I checked it after Church this morning, saw it wobble a bit, so I put some cinder-blocks on it. Mad at myself cause I didn’t trust my first reaction to just strap it down; instead, I probably raised the hive’s center of gravity by putting the cinder blocks on it.
Moral of story: trust yourself and listen to your knee-jerk, first-thought reaction.