One if those crazy warm days in January

[Acebird]

Well I got two out of three hives flying ... uh oh.  Yup one dead.  Darn the parent hive too.  This one is a little perplexing to me.  I didn't see any frass in the lower boxes to indicate varroa and there was quite a bit of honey but it was all over for the majority of the frames.  Two or three frames were solid in each box but all on one side.  I think the top one might have been the problem.  What was left was mostly crystallized.  I put that on late in the season from the refrigerator thinking it would be as good as sugar.
There was like an even coat of dead bees 1/2-3/4 high on the SBB and a smallish cluster of bees towards the front of the hive in the second and third box from the top.  Many bees were scattered among the frames but not clustered.  They ultimately starved but why did they do what they did?  Maybe the queen gave out in early fall and the cluster got too small to follow the honey?  Don't know.

[tjc1]

Hey, Ace - sorry to hear about the hive loss. I'm not clear on a couple of things that you say here though:

When you say varroa frass in the lower boxes, do you mean those crystal deposits in the cells?

"there was quite a bit of honey but it was all over for the majority of the frames. " not sure what you mean here

"Two or three frames were solid in each box but all on one side." I'm guessing you mean solid with capped stores... If so, that really is weird - they ate the stores on one side between two frames but not the other, and seemingly moved around the hive to do so???

With my two hive varroa wipeout last year there was barely a dead bee left in either hive - they all just left over time.

[Acebird]

When you say varroa frass in the lower boxes, do you mean those crystal deposits in the cells?

yes

"there was quite a bit of honey but it was all over for the majority of the frames. " not sure what you mean here

like spotty brood the honey was left in some cells and not in others across the whole frame.  Possible that happened because the honey was crystallized and some cells removed and filled with nectar so they ate the nectar honey but didn't eat the crystallized honey?  I don't know.  I have never seen this before.

"Two or three frames were solid in each box but all on one side." I'm guessing you mean solid with capped stores... If so, that really is weird - they ate the stores on one side between two frames but not the other, and seemingly moved around the hive to do so???

Out of 8 frames two to three would be solid honey on both sides of the frame.  Maybe that hapened because they kept to the warm side of the hive.  There are two hives on a pallet so the common sides never see sun.

[tjc1]

Did you find any small white pellets of crystallized sugar on the bottom board? I've been seeing that for the first time in my hives and am guessing that it is crystallized honey that they are either dumping or just losing as they try to work with it...

[Acebird]

I have a SBB so it ends up on a plastic tray below.  I did see white blobs but not granulated sugar.  Unfortunately this hive had a large amount of water in the tray a day or two before so it could be that the crystals were removed and then re-wetted by the water forming the white blobs.

[tjc1]

I have SBB's too, which is where they have been collecting - maybe 1-2 tablespoons worth when they get into what I imagine is a crystalized area.