Well as a new bee keeper I figured there would be some loss, but I also expected to find out about it next spring. We purposely started with two hives in case of a loss and good thing we did. I had been noticing on the warmer days there was some activity at only one of the hives. I gave it a while thinking it was just not warm enough. Well it finally got back into the 70’s (go figure in early November) so I popped the top off the hive to find nothing, well almost nothing. The was not a single bee alive or dead, but what there was turned into a full out invasive of hive beetles. They were in every nook and cranny!
While I knew I had hive beetles in both hives, I believed to have them under control. I was fogging the hives every 10 days until the cold started and I had beetle traps in the top boxes. Not really sure if the beetles caused the evacuation or if they just took over after the bees left, the result is the same. After disassembling the hive further I found honey stores in the top box and nothing but empty comb in the bottom box. If anyone has any insight besides the beetle infestation please share in the comments.
So now we baby the remaining hive and hope they are still here in the spring. Specifically we will be adding a candy board in early December to make sure they have enough food and adding a pollen patty in mid to late February to get them though to first bloom.
Feel free to share though s on what happened or your own stories of hive losses.