Judith

Went out to feed hives yesterday and had a very nasty surprise with a lifeless hive. The bees were spread all over the frames, lots of bottoms sticking out with not a drop of food in the frames. Found the queen also appeared lifeless, fortunately after I had picked her up I put her back on the frame.
This was the strongest colony I had, being a split with a new queen in July. I have seen no wasp activity at all in this area so there was no robbing.I had not removed any honey from this hive and thought the stores looked pretty good. This hive was inspected by a Bee Inspector in early September and the disease collections strip put in. They were fed then and there was a lot of sealed brood. I remember I could not remove the strip later that week due to torrential rain. Then we had a sick mom crisis so my husband left for the states and I left for a planned trip to mainland so I did not have the chance to feed again.
Since returning it has been too cold or windy to open the hives up till yesterday (although they were flying just last week on the one day that I had no time to do an inspection or even slip in some feed). Since this is an exposed part of Lewis, there is practically no forage left apart from a few Coltsfoots so any flying would have been a simple waste of energy.
I think the brood hatching demands over took the supply in store and when I was away the weather must have been too bad for any foraging. No bad odour. No other signs of disease.
Anyway I moved the hive inside my polytunnel so I could take photos and samples. Lid left off. Today I noticed some sluggish bee movement on the hive. Found the queen was now moving. Syrup feed given which perked up some more movement and as many still alive (even if only just) bees gathered from the mess at the bottom of the hive.
So question is - When can I take out the dead bees in the combs? I have about 4 combs in the centre of the hive with dead bees in most of the cells and 2 clean frames on the outside but I don't want to stress the bees any more by a complete rearrangement until they have recovered a bit. I also need to move them back out of the polytunnel as soon as I can in case the warmth makes them fly.