Ok its not that bad , I lost two of the three hives that I have, funny the Italian bees mutts, where not able to survive the mild winter that we had here in western PA. However the Buckfast bees my three year old hive is still going strong.
the two I lost still had honey and lost of sugar stores in the honey comb still available to them ....Kinda weird.
Any idea how old your queens were in the colonies you lost? Of the hives I lost, most were 2010 queens. I had a difficult season in 2011 keeping hives from going queenless and entered the winter with older queens than I would've preferred.
What was you mite control regimen? Possibly the buckfast handled the mites better.
Low bee numbers going into winter.
send a sample in and test for nosema - several hives i know of in western PA died late in the year and all of them tested high in nosema spore counts - nosema will take a toll on the bees and the queen - no sign of nosema in the hives since the bees were able to have numerous flight days every week.
Mite control.....Hmmmm. That might be it right there, if I remember right, the buck fast are mite resistant, I bet the italian mutt bee that I got last year are not resistant.......dang missed that one.....