Opened a friend's hive with him this morning. Two ten-frame deeps. The fairly-small cluster had tunneled up through the middle and died at the top, leaving plenty of honey behind. There's quite a bit of dark fecal matter inside the hive, so I'm guessing that they died from nosema or some other type of dysentery.
So what to do with this hive? Is it safe to let the other hives rob it?
Do you know what size the cluster was last fall? The colony could have been in trouble back then. I think it is better to not let bees rob out a dead out. Better to place frames into a hive and watch it very carefully. If the hive you place the frames into doesn't show any signs of decline then the frames are probably good for all your bees. If the honey is sealed you can rinse off the brown streaks but normally a small amount of streaking is not a problem.
He called it his "weak hive", so I don't think the cluster was large last fall.
If it was weak as in small instead of weak as in sick it would have had a better chance in a smaller volume (5 frame nuc) and maybe set on top of a larger hive.