I am sorry to hear about your bees and I hope they have escaped. When I saw the reports of the fires I thought of the bees and beekeepers on the area that would be in its path.

Because I, too, had a serious fire in my small apiary in upstate NY on March 10th of this year. I also operate a commercial nursery (plants) on my farm and the fire burned  through my nursery rows where plastic-potted trees and shrubs were wintering on polypropylene weed barrier and covered with spunbonded polyester frost covers.  In addition I had black plastic irrigation piping (both large distribution pipes and smaller drip emitters) in place. Nearer the bees I had plastic tarps covering about half of my winter insulation which is expanded polystyrene that was temporarily stacked off the hives. And an assortment of other plastics were in the area. The fire burned  them all and I only finally got it stopped less than two feet from the hives which were still wrapped in their inner layer of XPS boards.  The bees (and I) undoubtedly got a huge exposure to the smoke from these burning plastics before it was finally extinguished. Even the soles on my sneakers melted and my fleece jacket almost vaporized, burning too hot and fast to do any damage to me other than burn off some of my long hair.

None of this compares to the much more intense fire that your hives may have experienced, but with luck they won't have been exposed to that much burning plastic, only burning natural materials.

My hives were all in their winter configuration, with their upper entrance holes about four and half feet above the ground and somewhat protected from smoke by wind baffles.  They have lower entrances, but these are small and protected somewhat by the lower edges of the insulation panels.  Except in two cases, one colony in the end position nearest the fire, and one other one where I made a mistake in cutting the insulation earlier in the fall, leaving the lower entrance uncovered.  Both of those two colonies died within days (one in less than 48 hours, and the other sometime between 4 to 7 days after the fire.) A blizzard occurred on the fourth day after the fire and I was unable to inspect the area for any signs of activity until after the storm, so I don't have any idea how long they hung on. 

The bees in the two colonies which died had up until then looked looked strong and likely survive the remainder of winter. But the bees began trembling on the tops of their frames, and fairly soon started to just fall over as if they were experiencing some kind of acute poisoning.  The first colony was clearly in trouble within a day after the fire, and was dead soon after.  The other one seemed fine for the first few days, then just as I was buttoning everybody before the snowstorm (removing winter patty present during the fire) I noticed a second one with these same symptoms, but there nothing I could do about it.   I was afraid that when I could check again I would find the entire apiary dead.  But in the end it was only the one additional colony that died (out of a pre-fire total of 14.)

When it was warm enough to inspect, I discovered both hives had a fair amount of capped brood (brood on 2 to 3 deep frames - which is strong for my area in early March, though our winter up to then had been unusually mild) and bees died on the brood, as well as on the top of the frames within the feeding rim, and huge numbers had fallen down on the floor of the hive. (As it happened I had just cleaned out the floors a day or so before the fire, so this was not a long-time accumulation of dead bees.)  One queen was in her second winter and the other was in her first. Both marked queens were found among the dead bees.

At first I was just grateful that a dozen had apparently survived. (Up until this point I had never lost a colony for any reason so I was deeply upset about losing these two.) But when I began to work the survivors in mid -April  (after the warm winter, the arrival of spring was absurdly delayed) some of the colonies just seemed somehow "off" to me.  I assumed that they had been weakened, but I didn't quite know how, or in what way.  Towards the end of the month I saw what seemed like a bit of "snotty", slightly patchy brood, that quickly  progressed to something that looked to me like EFB. But I allowed myself to be temporarily persuaded by experienced local beekeepers that it was most likely to be PMS. 

That's a fair diagnosis in many, if not most, cases, except for one thing: All of my colonies get regular and effective mite treatments, and I also monitor the mite counts continuously all year round, so I knew they were unlikely to have developed PMS. 

I dithered for a week or two between the two possibilities, but in the end settled the issue using the Vita test kits. What looked like EFB, was in fact EFB.

Of course, I didn't get EFB from the fire. But I believe the fire stressed all of the hives enough so that some of them were overwhelmed by the bacteria, and came down with an overt infection.  Of the 12 survivors, only four never showed any sign of EFB  infection.  The others all did to one degree or another. Eventually I treated all the colonies with Oxytet and that cleared it out  And it has not returned.  All but two of them appear to have fully recovered their mojo. 

So to answer your question: I would expect that bees exposed to a significant amount of smoke would be highly stressed or weakened and thus vulnerable to opportunistic infections, whether by parasites or diseases, or both.  And of course they may need to be moved if you were depending on nectar or pollen resources which may now be gone for the time being. It's impossible to know in advance exactly what threats to be on the look out for, however if I had a similar experience again, I would increase my vigilance in watching for any sign of  trouble(s) and be more proactive in managing them, rather than relying on improving conditions to do the trick.  I waited too long to treat for the EFB, and my bees paid a high price for that. Taking a take a wait and see attitude in a colony that has experienced this level of stress may be the wrong thing to do, even if in normal colonies it would be wiser choice.

Hope you find your bees safe and sound. 

Nancy
   

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