A little less than two weeks ago, on 10/4/15, I removed the supers from my strong hive, and inspected both hives. The smaller, weaker hive was still plugging away, but didn't seem to have made much progress. In hindsight, I should have been feeding this hive more during the season to try to encourage them to build out the comb, and I also could have given them a boost with brood and frames from the stronger hive.
At the same time that I performed these inspections, I put feeders on both hives, to help them improve the stores of honey in the hive bodies.
On Monday after work, we noted that the bees were really upset about something. Flying like crazy, collecting in weird areas, such as on the hood of a car, and on the neighbor's swing. It was very strange, and there were a lot more dead bees in front of the hive than there had been the day before. This was concerning, but I couldn't say for sure if it was robbing. So I made sure the entrance reducers on each hive were in place, and called my Dad. He listened to all the "symptoms" and said that maybe they'd gotten into something that the colony didn't like. If bees come back to the hive smelling like a chemical that the colony really doesn't like, they will start to kill off the foragers. At this point, I didn't know what else to do except wait.
In the meantime, while I was waiting, I asked our nextdoor neighbors, and they explained that they used a plant food, but they had used it many times before and none of us have ever seen the bees react this way. I ruled this out, but I still believe the bees got into something, somewhere that caused a lot of problems.
On the afternoon of Sunday 10/11/15, after returning from a weekend road trip, I checked the bees to see if they needed syrup, and found the feeder being robbed by another colony of honeybees through the top entrance, and the lower, front entrance was being robbed by yellow jackets! When I investigated further, I found countless dead bees inside the hive, on the screened bottom, and determined there is not living colony left in the hive. All the activity in the hive was from robbers.
After another call to my Dad, and a couple days and nights of thinking about it, the reality still has not completely sunk in. My Dad suspects the colony was poisoned by something, and he said that many pesticides that homeowners treat with, such as Sevin, are notorious for situations like this. The bees live long enough to bring the chemicals back to the colony, and they all perish. I suspect this situation is more common in urban areas, and that the chances of this happening to me are much higher because of where I live.
I wish I could say for sure that I'll "get back on the horse" and order a package in the spring, but if there is a high likelihood that it could happen again, and I don't have any way to prevent it, I'm really not 100% sure.
I had no idea that I'd be so emotionally involved in a group of intelligent insects, but my heart is aching as though I've lost a pet.
