Hello Walter,
I am puzzled by your report *but* I have heard similar reports of hard luck
with Russian bees.

Walter said:
  For the  second year in a row I've lost half my Russians (spring packages)
that started well and died by August.  No mites on the sticky boards,
either.

Were other strains started similar at the same time and did ok?

Walter said:
For example, yesterday I opened a hive that was full of bees, with an active
queen carrying this year's paint mark, and all twenty frames were absolutely
empty.  I mean absolutely:  no brood, no eggs, no honey, no nectar, no
pollen, no queen cups, no raid debris, no nothing but a lot of demoralized
bees and a queen on empty drawn combs -- and with a full hivetop feeder of
heavy sugar water that had been sitting there for three weeks (itself the
replacement for another feederful that had sat there untouched for three
weeks previously).

Even these worker bees are not acting normal. Check all the most common
causes  first and then the complex . Sounds like you can rule out varroa
mites .

Walter said:
 so I'll restock with Russians from a   different source and hope for the
best.

Might be the best idea. I am going to toss out an opinion and maybe others
on BEE-L will also.

For a yet unknown reason the above hive of bees does not want to use the
drawn comb given them. In my opinion they should have at least stored the
syrup. The only time I ever heard of the above the hobby beekeeper had
stored his unused brood comb with moth balls instead of the
paradichlorobenzene crystals.

The only reason I bring up the story is your story of the above hive sounds
similar and I wonder why the bees will not at least store syrup in the comb.
Even queenless bees will store syrup and build comb until they dwindle off.

Did the queen ever lay in the comb?

Bob

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