Hey everyone. I just started beekeeping this spring and have gotten 3 hives. One was from a package, two others from cut-outs. I've been reading this forum for several months and learning from local guys, but now I've got a weird problem.
One of my cutouts hasn't been doing great, but they filled one brood box and I gave them a second to work on. There were some honey stores and the queen seemed to be laying ok. I went about 3 weeks without checking them (went to college) and when I went back Friday, nearly all the bees were dead. My parents looked at the hive fronts every few days to see if anything unusual was happening while I was gone, but they didn't notice anything. When I looked inside, I found just a little capped brood, only a handful of bees, and no honey. There's a strong hive about 5 feet away that is still doing well. Any ideas on what happened?
Thanks for the help!
Pat