Upon approaching the hive, I heard a roar. Looked at a couple of frames and then stopped and went back inside formy camera. One one frame only, I found 2-4 bees on each side with deformed wing virus. I also found a few dried out larvae on that frame, and in one of my pictures of the deformed bee, there's another bee with a varroa mite on its back. Wait, now that I look, I can find 3 varroa mites in that one picture. All year long I haven't had a picture of a bee with a mite on its back. Sigh.
I honestly can't believe that this hive has a bad varroa problem. I tested several times in September, found < 1 per square inch over a 72 hour period, but did a light sugar dusting anyway. The testing was so easy that I did it often, went kind of overboard. This is the "conservative hive," with mostly foundation frames.
I didn't see the queen and my camera crapped out, so I don't know if there are eggs, but there are certainly larvae. No queen cells. Honey is really dark and sunken, maybe that's normal?