>Paul, re your dying bees, your comment about winter coming on quickly
caught my attention.  At the "fall turnover," any bees which had previously
gone through the nurse/mid-age/forager routine quickly die off.  Was the
cold weather preventing them from flying away?

An astute observation Randy! I think you may have hit it on the head. How did you get so smart? Your momma should be proud.

This weekend I fed an additional 7 colonies. 4 with new feed, 3 old feed, some previously fed some not, 1 that had shown sign but not been fed.  All took the feed and while showing the same sign it was not lethal to the clustering bees, I am confident because of temperature. They were able to fly off and crawl back in as the day cooled. So here is my working hypothesis.

All of these colonies were very large, most produced 6 and 7 western supers, and were newly brought home and sat through 10 or so days of cold days and frosty nights. All had "good stores" but hoping to make the ones that were not "dead heavy" so I put feed on when a few days of warmer weather was forecast. The excitement of incoming food combined with the relative warm weather drove the old foragers out. "there"s something going on but you don't know what it is" Bob Dylan. Once out on the landing and boxes they gyrate and pump their abdomens to try to get to flight temp but being old and tired and running on empty they fall to the ground. Some crawl off, more just cluster in place and when the sun goes down that's it. Meantime Paul is waking amount his flock seeing only fed colonies reacting and thinks Armageddon is here. In fact it is only nature taking it's course. 

I am far from new to this game but I guess I had never witnessed just this combination of conditions before. Anyway I like tales with happy endings so this is my story and I'm sticking to it. At least until some "alternative fact" (don't you love that phrase?) rears it's ugly head and puts the kibosh on the whole thing. I have some great pictures of rows of colonies with only the ones with feeders having a cluster of stressed bees out front on a sunny day if any one is interested. A few sleepless nights is a small price to pay for a good lesson learned.

Paul Hosticka 
Dayton WA

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