NOAA was predicting that we'd have a very mild winter this year. Milder temperatures mean more active bees. Looks like the just ran out of food and absconded on a warm day. 43 in January sounds really warm for RI!

 

If all food is gone there are just 2 explanations, ate it all and starved, or, got robbed.

If the other hives are already very low in stores you better get feeding. Cos it's in spring when they start raising brood that they really chew through the stores.

 

I will offer a third explanation Oldtimer, a fungicide that disturbs their metabolism by displacing the "CoQ10" co--enzyme. and locking up the metabolic pathway.. It causes them to consume alot more just to maintain the normal energy level..

.Look back, this is about the 4th post with these same symptoms.

Crazy Roland

 

Thanks for the input, as much as I hate to interfere with the hive in the winter I’ll be keeping ( beekeeping ! ) a close eye on their supplies from now on. Roland .. I do worry about the chemicals in the foraging environment, all my colonies are residential and although I have some control over the landscaping practices on each individual property I have absolutely no say in what the neighbors do .. I had three colonies acting very squirrelly after a neighbor did some heavy duty landscaping last spring.

 

When did you have those bees up to winter weight, the date? Was there any pollen in the hives? It was a long warm fall and early winter so colonies at winter weight in mid October were on the verge of starving by the turn of the year. Pollen limited all fall so lack of protein in the hives.

Recall also the extreme drought conditions, it made for weak bees going into fall unless they were properly tended to. Small clusters of winter bees if they had the resources to even make healthy winter bees.

Pollen sub and throwing the feed at them again after Thanksgiving time went a long way in keepin them alive so far this season. The reports this coming spring out of the drought zones in the Neast should be very sobering.

 

Clyderroad is much closer to you than I am, so his climate/forage data is relevant. I am however very suspicious of your comments: "I had three colonies acting very squirrelly after a neighbor did some heavy duty landscaping last spring. "

Crazy Roland

 

Clyderoad : what you’re saying rings true, all the hives were up to winter weight by the last week in October .. when I began the OA treatments in mid November the bees were very active, I could treat them early in the morning before they took off for the day.
Roland : I don’t keep all my bees in one yard, they’re scattered over 4 locations, the three squirrelly hives were well away from the one I lost yesterday .. I lost one of the squirrelly ones during the summer and worked hard to keep the other two healthy .. it felt like they all got a little sick at the same time .. poor brood patterns, an abundance of drones, lots of dead bees around the entrances’..just acting wrong.... one was a new package which started out well and then suddenly emptied out, the other two I mixed and matched brood and stores around and after about a month they got their groove back, both went into the winter strong.

 

One possibility is the strips you were using didn't kill the mites effectively.

If you did mid November OA treatments it could have been too late.

Can you tell us what your mite levels were in the fall before your OA treatments?

 

Irishdan - It is good your bees are scattered. We have 20 yards, and see wildly different results. If say half the yards where started from packages, and mites where the issue, you would expect near identical results from all of those yards. Ant differences from mites would be expected to be caused be mite drift. We do see slight mite drift in the yards with . known bees in the area, but when we have many more hives than they do, it is not significant.

What we do see is dramatic differences in yards only a few miles apart, often with symptoms like you described where they faltered early and recovered. Last time I checked, hives do NOT recover from mites.

I still say they got into something that made their metabolic process inefficient.

Crazy Roland

 

Any thoughts or observations would be greatly appreciated

We (in central of NE ) had severe drought last summer and early part of fall. Even in fall Goldenrod, bamboo, aster - they were flowering just differently - buds start to open but then drying mostly without full development of nectar and pollen. Our bees were practically with very low stores. They were in need for heavy fall feeding. There was very strong robbing too. (also important with drifting mites). Mites levels were on high numbers. Regular IPM was just some kind of miss.In that case viruses were spread greatly. To my suprise - Sacbrood virus was less visible, but DWV and Chronic BPV were in large numbers visible. That drought situation brings also one unusual problem. In some cases bees blame queens for restrain in eggs laying and they start to supersedure her (even she was good queen before drought). In many cases if beekeeper not act in time, hives were queenless in fall. (virgin not returned from mating flight or they were not mated right). These cases occur among members of our club. Story of friend of my. - on end of December we checked his hives with infrared camera. One hive was dead. On good day in January (2weeks ago) he opened that hive and there were no bees (few dead on bottom board), no stores. Some small brown spots on top bars and walls (not that many but visible) - sign of dysentery. So here puzzle we set-up as explanation - during second part of August during hive inspection he saw few supersedure cells, but he also spotted a queen (marked young good one) so he cut these cells. After couple weeks he checked that hive again and again saw queen cups and couple queen cells but also couldn't find a queen. So he decided and leaved two or three of them just in case. On last fall inspection he saw capped brood, no queen. (He is always having problem with spotting eggs on comb). So he was sure that he is having good hive with not bad stores. During walking thru hives on sunny fall day he saw activity around hive entrance. And end of December surprise - dead hive. Even beekeeper with some experience missed signs of queenless hive, dwindling bee population, strong robbing effect when he was thinking that was hive activity.
So my guessing in your case - for sure dwindling population on fall because of 1. mites/viruses, 2.queenless with strong robbing, or there maybe something else but we do not know that yet.