walter weller" > "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"

Is what u describe simple queen failure? - becoming infertile, not even a
drone breeder. If she was young, pheremone production would have continued
and no signal would have been given of impending failure so no supercedure
cells.  After brood rearing ceased , the aging population of demoralised
bees would be likely to become poor defenders, allowing slow robbing to
start that cleaned out the combs. Have u tried to find out if other
customers of that package supplier had similar failures?

Robin Dartington

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