Thank you for your time! I appreciate it.It's important to learn how to identify pests, diseases, and understand the life cycle/biology of honeybees if you want overwintering success. Bees dont swarm in December but will abscond if they are dying from disease and pests in a last-ditch effort to save the colony. Did you treat for mites and did the treatment work? Any signs of brood disease? If you lose a hive, there's a few things you can check. Scattered dead brood with pinholes in the capping's. Mite feces on the tops of the brood cells, looks like patches of white crystals. Take a cup of the dead bees and do a wash and mite count and you'll have your answer as to why your bees died.
Well, I did treat with Hopguard II as I try to rotate my treatments every year.
There were hardly any dead bees in the hive at all, maybe 20.
Ok, the white crystals I did notice after they were gone - in the cool spring. When I looked it up it, I found that it was crystallized sugar. Wild bees were robbing the empty hive.
Every time I think I've got things figured out something else goes wrong...
Picture from earlier this year:
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