What a disappointment. I thought I was going to bring all 10 of my hives through winter. It was looking good until this week. Had been seeing slower and slower activity around one of my weakest hives. Then, this week, it looked like some robbing activity; but, no dead bees below the hive and no fighting at the door. Popped it open today to find the hive dead and a few robbers checking things out. Luckily, I caught it in time to get several frames of honey in the freezer before the robbers tore them up.
Not sure what happened. Very small cluster about the size of my fist, head in the comb, starvation style. Just a few inches from plenty of honey. I figure I must have lost the queen sometime back. There were just a very few cells of capped brood remaining. As the population got smaller and smaller, the cluster just wasn't big enough to get through this last ice storm we had last weekend.
On the bright side, I have a 10-frame double-deep going gang busters that I've been planning to tear down to an 8-frame this spring. I'll pull four frames and a queen and dump them in this empty hive with plenty of comb & honey. They should go from zero to sixty when the poplar flow starts.
