With the latest abandoned hive there was plenty of honey, the top brood box has all 10 frames filled perfectly and many frames of pollen with honey in the bottom box. It was a swarm captured in June though we had a rainy summer they had drawn out and filled 16 brand new brood frames. Last check in October they had capped brood, I keep check list for each hive. I guess it is a matter weak or older bees as was suggested with my other abandoned hive. That hive was a package of bees put in early May that never got going, location was a factor, combined with a late swarm, weak combined with weak. Also we had some hives with a high mite count in another bee yard but this yard had not been too high, but it is a problem.

The thing I think is odd is there are no dead bees, both hives are totally empty. We lost hives last winter and in the spring I had stinky moldy bees to clean out. I guess they have saved me some work, avoiding the mess of rotten dead bees and mouse damage to the wax.

As far as old queens, in the swarm combined with the package bees we could not find a queen, they did have two open queen cells and capped brood. We just put their brood box on top of the package bees who also had capped brood and we saw the queen on the package bees, I manipulated the frames to put all the brood, pollen and honey in the spots where the bees would want them.

Why there are no dead bees in the hives is what got me. I can see dieing of starvation or disease but these bees left.

Thanks for all your thoughts on this. I did expect some dead hives come spring but not disappearing bees.

Karen

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