> I forwarded the mail to my Nigerian friend asking whether African bees 
> would abscond from a hive leaving stores etc but no bees.  Here is her 
> response.

> "Am afraid I have no sympathy for anyone combining a package with a swarm 
> in this way...

Thanks for the chuckle, Chris, and demonstrating so beautifully how what may 
be good advice in one region can be entirely out of touch in another -- and 
again showing that, as Bill says, all beekeeping is local.

To go back to the original problem, I gather there was no brood found in the 
autopsy, and since bees almost always have a little, the best guess is 
queenlessness, for whatever reason.  This is not absconding.  It is just 
drifting out of old bees with no queen to hold them.

As for the cause, no one knows.  We always have a few of those over winter 
and never think twice. 

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