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.

             ***********************************************
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

Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at:
http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm