Hello Ron,
Determining what caused the demise of a colony was easy before mites. Not so
easy now let alone over the internet.

>  There was no honey left, but there are other colonies in the yard so it
would have been robbed.

You can usually tell a robbed hive by looking at the comb for ragged edges.

> There was at least 5 -6 lbs of dead bees.  The entire bottom board was
covered as was the entire inner cover.

I do not understand the covering of the inner cover but 5-6 pounds of bees
would not be what was left of a *strong* hive .

  >They died in pretty much of a cluster covering about 8 frames.

If they died with their heads stuck in comb they starved.

> There was capped brood that appeared healthy.

This indicates the hive was recently queenright.


>. I had thought maybe pesticide use but it just does not add up to that.

Usually we find most of the dead bees out front of the hive with pesticide
kill *but* not always. *If* a pesticide kill took all your foragers and all
that was left was young emerging bees then your hive would be easy prey for
robbers. However bees usually do not rob during a flow but will rob when  a
flow stops like a day after a rainstorm.


 >The only other cause I can come up with is starvation but that would have
meant going through a fair amount of stored honey during a honey (albeit not
a strong) flow.

If you left 50 pounds of honey on like you said and the hive had plenty of
bees starvation should not have been the problem *but* if the  hive was
robbed out then the bees which stayed to cover brood could have starved over
one of the cold periods you talked about.

Many times hives (even of commercial beekeepers) starve every year after
honey supers are pulled if all the hives honey was in the supers which were
removed. The reason most beekeepers either leave a super of honey for the
bees or feed after pulling supers.

> One other thing is I can not ever remember finding a dead colony with a
large amount of dead bees on the inner cover

Indeed strange!

> nor ever remember losing a colony this time of year.

 I lose a few this time of year to queenlessness but if your hive was
queenless for very long you would not have found capped brood and most
likely would have seen signs of laying workers.

I am afraid to guess on your hive as I believe the hive had a couple of
problems and possibly even several problems all contributing to the failure
but maybe the above might help you figure out the cause.

Bob

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