charles said "This year has had something I don't recall seeing before.  If the picture came in,  you will see dead bees out at the edges of the box.  Not starvation as the boxes are full of food, and no cluster of dead bees head in cells. "

I've got two yards where all the hives exhibit the same symptoms.  Hives were treated in the spring, tested low mite counts, treated end of Aug, beginning of Sept and tested low mite counts.  All hives had plenty of honey and pollen, enough room for the queen to lay and bees to cluster.
found 3 deep frames with a nice pattern half full of capped brood, not a bee on the capped brood, bees scattered, no cluster, dead bees on the bottom board.  Minor indication of varroa scat in a few cells, none of the bees had deformed wings, none had been seen all year.
  pulled out some of the capped brood, looked normal, bees that were hatching had normal wings.
  In late Nov. found out about one small yard between my yards that had crashed, a few weeks ago found out about another small yard that had crashed.  Plan to send a sample of the comb and brood to beltsville.  I have two beeks on both sides of me that are going to check their hives as we talked at a bee meeting last night.  My conclusion, I got mite bombed, I expect to lose all the full size hives as it warmed up enough that the nucs were flying but no full size bees apparently had enough bees left to break cluster. It's expected to be in the 50's today, going to OAV the nucs and open some of the full hives.  I could write what they will look like now, but will wait until I actually inspect them.  bummer

mike syracuse
  

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html