This is my first year with bees, and I'm learning a lot from you folks. I appreciate any help you could provide. My package of bees arrived on April 17, and I installed them in a Top Bar Hive. After about a 10 days of building comb, I noticed supercedure cells. (middle of comb, and not on edges) after a few more days, the marked queen was gone. I left the hive alone for a while. When I went back in there somewhere around May 9, I saw the new queen. 3 days later I peeked again because there wasn't much activity outside the hive. New queen was gone and had taken at least hive the colony with her. There were still a couple of capped supercedure cells, so I left it for a few more days. Peeked again and actually saw a brand new queen. Smaller abdomen ( I assume still virgin), but definitely not a worker or drone. I never saw her again. I left on a short trip on May 29th. The bees had about 8 bars with comb. They had filled most of the comb with nectar or pollen. No brood. Lots of capped honey in there. I got back and peeked in on May 31, and nearly all of the bees are gone. There may have been about 100 left. And every bit of the honey, nectar, and most of the pollen is gone too. What happened?
The day before I started these bees, I caught a small swarm and put them in a top bar right beside these. That swarm hive is going like gang-busters. I also received a Lang deep full of bees and queen around May 15, and filled another Lang deep from a cutout on May 20. All the other bees seem to be doing great, but that package of bees didn't. Could they have absconded? Without a queen? Could they have joined one of these other colonies? Colony collapse? Robbing to starvation? Note, before I left on May 29, I had seen no increased traffic to that hive.
And another question. Would it be safe to move the bars of comb from this hive to the other hive that is doing well? Thanks for the help.