Thank you for your comment Peter.  Let me give a bit more detail ....

It is the rainy season here but it started in Late April / May and will run until say November.  In the rainy season the bees do slow down but what I am seeing now is rather different from last year.

What I have seen in the last few weeks is a marked decline.  Last year in the rainy season we had say three frames of a mix of capped brood through to fresh eggs.  This year until a few weeks ago it was the same.  Now we are down to just one frame of brood.  The queen is laying but few eggs.  The number of bees as a whole is way down.  The situation until a few weeks ago was normal, what is happening now is a concern since it is resulting in very weak colonies.

"so I wonder if you have actually lifted the lids and looked" ......   erm, what  ...... 

The bees are in North Chiang Mai.  At this time of year there are very few flowers.  We have been feeding every week for a couple of months now and expect to do so until late October.

I want to strengthen them a lot since this is way off the norm but also I want to do some splits a little later and I can only do that if there are frames of capped brood..... 

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