Quick history....I have been mentoring a friend. Winter (2010/2011) a year ago he lost all 3 of his hives..It was a rough winter here in PA. He got 4 packages I believe it was early June 2011 when they came in. By fall three were doing OK the forth we combined with a weaker hive. The last I helped him look at them was October and they were still OK...not real heavy, but I felt they should make it. He noticed no bees a few weeks ago and checked to find they had not made it.
I went out today to see if I could see a reason why they had not made it through a very mild winter only to find 3 hives...2 deeps each, 2 with a medium, all drawn comb....Totally empty...not a drop of honey to be found. No dead cluster of bees....No pile of dead bees on the bottom (some crumbs from a furry visitor...very little damage from them). The comb is clean, no rough edges that would be left if robbed. No patches of abandon brood. Nothing in the comb but some fall pollen, just a yellow as it would have been in the fall. Each hive exactly the same.
Could 3 hives, side by side, all abscond in late fall? He had put up a blue foam board wind break in the fall...Maybe the girls didn't like the new daycore?
Any thoughts???.....Jim
It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. Don't know if Churchill kept any bees or not?
I'm clueless about what really happened to the bees but I could speculate on the foam insulation your buddy used. I keep 2" of foam insulation around my bees YEAR round. All 6 sides. The bees do great, but they can get too warm if the hives is packed with bees and you need to keep an eye on that. No bees have absconded from my foam-tastic hives yet.
I did attend a bee conference at Michigan State University last year where one of the speakers (not on the MSU staff), claimed a buddy of his super insulated a strong hive with 3" thick foam to survive Michigan winters and the bees swarmed on Christmas day because they got too hot! That is a 3rd hand story, so who knows what really caused the bees to swarm. The speaker used the story to promote just using a ¾" thick slab of foam on the top of a wood hive.
I doubt that all 3 of your buddies hives absconded because of too much insulation. He would have to be a pretty detail orientated person to have insulated his hives better than I keep mine insulated. Overheating would be even less likely IMO if he winter in 2 deeps + 1 medium because you lose more heat in that config due to the greater surface area. I winter in half that size.
I would vote for all starved to death and in the mild winter did not die in a cluster and were cleaned out by the last of the survivors.