Guilfordbeekeepers.org

I have a question, I have 1 hive and crazy as it seems I'd to get this one mastered before getting any more.
2 years ago in July I got my girls and checked on them and feed them, they lived over the winter and with the warm weather early they were busy out collecting and I continues to check my hive and noticed a queen cell. I then looked for the queen and she was dead. So at the time they should be out harvesting I lost time with letting them requeen so no honey for me this past year.
I kept a watch on them and started feeding them again in October - November. They had honey stored in the medium brood box, the medium super plus I had left on a shallow super all had honey for the winter.
December I had some major problems with family issues so the best I did was look at the flying around and I put a mouse guard / reducer on it. January 5th I got a chance to open the top cover and I saw a few dead ones in a small cluster in the shallow super which was full with honey, the medium had the same a small dead cluster, frames with honey, the bottom super was slap clean of honey bare frames. Looking at the bottom screen there might have been 100 if that dead bees.
I would think they swarmed because of no food in the lower but I have no idea why they didn't go up to the food?
The bees that I had were Carniolan bee which like to swarm.
I'm going to try again but not with this type of bee, any idea would be helpful, I'd just like to be able to do some kind of harvest of honey and see them around longer than they have
Russian look interesting but I to crazy on the mean bee "LOL"
Thanks in advance
Sorry for this post being so long

Did you do any varroa mite count in the late summer/early fall. If so, what was the count? If not, a good bet is that the varroa population built up over the summer and as your queen slowed brood production, more mites were in the hive to attack the smaller amount of brood. This late summer, early fall brood is the over winter-population of bees that you need in your hive to have available for brood care when the queen ramps up egg laying anytime after December 21st.

The queen is not going to lay more eggs than there are workers to care for them. As older workers age out and die off, there are fewer and fewer healthy young workers to take their places. The queen lays fewer eggs, fewer bees, death spiral of diminishing population for the hive begins and continues into the winter/early spring, and you have a dead out. This is a fairly common scenario. I'm not saying for sure it happened in your hive, but it could be a possibility.

I think swarming is unlikely for December or January. If the bees were completely out of food or the hive had been slimed up by small hive beetles, then maybe they would leave. If it was warm enough for them to fly and swarm, it should have been warm enough for them to break cluster and move up to their honey stores.

Does anyone else have any thoughts about this situation?

Jacobs- thanks for the reply, very well could be varroa mite but really didn't see many. My wife has mentioned for me to move my hive as she thinks our neighbor might have sprayed them.. Thinking more on that I can see the goob doing it

Normally with a pesticide kill or spraying, you would expect to see huge numbers of dead bees at the front of the hive. If I did not see piles of dead bees, I would not be inclined to think pesticides were involved.

I see very few varroa on bees when I look in a hive. In the spring, I will open up some capped drone brood and look for varroa on the larvae since they prefer drone brood if available. If I see several emerged bees (worker or drone) with deformed wings (shriveled) I am pretty sure there is a significant varroa mite presence, but a sticky board test for mites will really give an answer that eyeballing the situation won't.

There were about 10-15 on the front entrance
I didn't open any capped drone brood, still learning but the dead bees I saw didn't look deformed or anything, all were normal looking but dead?