My one overwintered have showed a lot of activity in March. I topped up
the feeder I had put on in the fall about the first of April. As the
bees didn't seem interested in the feeder assumed they still had ample
stores. A week or so later the hive had collapsed with lots of bees in
the combs looking for food and a layer of bees in the screen access for
the feeder. think they should have been able to get around the dead bees
to access the syrup (sugar water with megabeediet and honey-bee-healthy.
the hive had a lot of bees but I saw no evidence of brood. Crocus was in
bloom before the collapse and I saw a few bits of pollen while cleaning
out the hive. The questions in my mind are could the sugar mixture have
gone bad over the winter or might the hive have got into some pesticide
that inhibited them from processing food. Notice in several of the
packaged bees I have installed this spring a lot of the cells were
filled from the syrup. (installed same April 4th before much was
blooming in the Boston/Mass area.) so wondered why this hive wasn't
doing the same.
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