What am I doing wrong?

[Linda0318]

 We started last year with one hive and it died at this time of year.  This year we started with 2 hives one Styrofoam and the other wooden.  The Styrofoam one did excellent all year and the wooden one did not produce any honey. Now both hives have died. We had a feeling about the wooden one but both are confusing us. What are we doing wrong?

[L Daxon]

Need a bit more info to diagnose.  Did you feed them? Could they have starved in a dearth?  Been robbed out of food?  Did you do mite counts?  Were there a bunch of dead bees out front from a pesticide kill?  Any evidence of fungus, viruses, bacterial disease? Did they go queenless and you not catch it?

What do you think killed them?

[AllenF]

Tons of questions along with the above questions.   And you will not get honey from a first year hive started from a package.   I am assuming that they were packages.   Tell us more about the history of the hives this year.

[Michael Bush]

Assuming they didn't starve, the most common cause of losses in recent years is Varroa.

http://www.bushfarms.com/beespests.htm#varroa