Hello? Anybody in There?

Feeding Back Honey Using Entrance Feeders

I left the top feeders on until nearly Thanksgiving as our daytime temperatures can be in the mid-50's and the overnights had not yet dropped lower than the upper 30's. When finally removing the top feeders I did an inspection to check on the stores. The Sasha hive remained the strongest at that time with lots of honey in the top box but I added entrance feeders to the Dmitry and OV hives, feeding them back their own honey so that they could just store it and cap it without having to expend the energy needed to turn it into honey as they would have had I fed them syrup, which would also add moisture to the hive and is a major a no-no in colder temperatures.

It's too cold for bees to be moving when I leave for work in the mornings and it's dark by the time I  return home but I did observe activity at all the hives this weekend. All appeared well...

Until this morning when I pounded on the side of the Sasha hive. All was too quiet.... I lifted the outer cover to peek in the hole of the inner cover and there was not a bee in sight! Removing the inner cover, I could peer between the frames all the way through the three medium boxes down to the screened bottom board. Not a bee to be seen! By this I mean a live bee.

Frame of Capped Honey in the Sasha Hive

I pulled all the boxes apart thinking I would find evidence of anything that would make the bees want to leave or kill them off... but there was (1) plenty of honey and pollen left behind, (2) space (not an issue this time of year) and (3) ventilation (popsicle sticks glued to the corners of the inner cover provide for that) - the three things that make for a happy bee hive.

There were two frames full of honey and another five frames partially full. The bottom box had five frames containing lots of pollen so if the bees had starved to death I would have found frames containing dead bees head-first in the cells, but the hive was completely void of any bees, dead or alive. There were perhaps a dozen dead bees on the bottom screen, certainly not enough to give an indication of a major die-off.

Did they swarm one unseasonably warm day? Highly unlikely as there really wasn't a reason to move on and they'd not have the ability to find food this time of year. I'm sad for the loss of the hive but everything is a learning experience and I'll do some research to see if I can determine what happened.

2012 has been a tough year for me as a beekeeper. It was my third season. I'm no longer a newbie with just enough experience to be comfortably dangerous. I mysteriously killed the Sasha queen early spring, killed my best queen in the OV hive when harvesting honey, experienced a major die off from the Dmitry hive, probably due to pesticides and now lost the Sasha hive. In 2013 I'm going back to thinking like a newbie!