Guilfordbeekeepers.org

last week i spoke with another beekeeper about splitting one of my hives,the hive had 1 large super full of brood 1 medium full of brood and 2 medium supers full of honey,the hive in the evening would have bees bearding on the front covering 3 of the supers. i walk to work and i pass this hive on my way. yesterday on my way to work i noticed that there were about 500 to 1000 dead bees in front of the hive,i removed the bees from the front of the hive to see if there were anymore.this morning i took the hive completely apart to remove the dead bees from the inside. now the bad news, there now is about 1 and a half frames of capped brood,i could not locate the queen,there is no honey in the hive.i put the hive back together and put a feeder on top. any ideas on what went wrong? robbing?are the dead bees from starvation?
out of the 4 hives i have this was one of the strongest
what do i need to do now?
thanks

From your description of dead bees in front and all of the honey gone, it sounds like robbing. Do you have an entrance reducer on the hive? Was this hive the queen right one when you made the split? If you did not see the queen did you see eggs? A little more information would help, but for now I would make sure to have an entrance reducer on. Robbing is becoming more of a problem with this continued heat and less nectar out there for the bees.

i have not made the split yet, i was going too next week. yes i did have a reducer on the front
thanks

It sounds to me like a pesticide kill, followed by robbing.

The above is a guess. I just don't see any other explanation.

ski and i went into the hive friday morning, could not find queen or larva, added a queen this afternoon from Locust&Honey.we will see how it looks in about a week

Tat2guru also showed me a pile of dead bees that were on the bottom board maybe a few thousand more bees.
I don't have experience with pesticide kills and would sure not argue that it was not a pesticide kill but, it bothers me that there were so many dead bees on the inside of the hive. I think I would have expected all or most of the bees to be outside the hive spinning around not able to fly. I am wondering if this may be a case of Nosema ceranae. I guess maybe time will tell. But if there are another pile of dead bees on the bottom board I would suggest getting them checked.

If my memory serves me right, Nosema Cerranae is also known as disappearing disease. All you find is an empty hive. Isn't that why they first claimed CCD was caused by it?

What I have read is that Nosema C was found in the CCD hives I have not found that the bees with Nosema C leave the hive.

Everything still says that fumagilin - B is the cure.

I have found the following but I need to do some more reading:

1. Nosema C. is BAD, an infected bee will die in 8 to 10 days, during this time they also lose the ability to excrete good brood food. Hence this explains why a hive dies off so fast, the adults are dying and not able to feed the brood.

2. Lack of ability to feed the brood explained why when you look in a hive with a small cluster of bees ( less that 1 frame) and 3 frames of brood ( all stages) that looks like AFB, but no smell or ropy larve. Next you test for EFB, results come back negative.

went into the hive this morning to check to see if new queen was laying, i did find brood and larva, could not see any eggs but it was cloudy. looks to me like the new queen is doing her job.