The symptoms that you are describing--dead cluster near honey--could also
be due to either nosema or tracheal mite.  If you send your bees to the
USDA lab for testing, we might all learn something, to see whether we can
exclude those suspects.

If you wish to send me 25 non-rotten bees from the cluster, I will check
for nosema.

The symptom of no queen is straightforward--colonies with queen failure
over winter typically die out.

In one group of 150  hives that I'm tracking carefully over the winter
(made up from my weakest colonies in late fall--6-7 frame average in early
Dec.), total losses as of yesterday were 8 (5%).  Five went queenless.
 Three crashed from EFB.  If our spring had been colder, I'd expect to see
more mortality due to nosema and/or paralytic viruses.

--
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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