Anybody any ideas of what happened?
I have grown hyacinths for many years, and never had such an experience. I am clueless what might have happened. There wasn't possibly a child that might have messed with them was there? I know they can be very curious about things.

Sue

Thanks for the reply Sue. No chance for kids or anybody playing around with them. The buds were 1 to 2 inches long with 1/2 to 1" stems attached to them, The stems all had a clean horizontal cut-like ending and were sitting tight amongst almost straight up leaves. There was no way anybody or anything could have gotten past the leaves to cut the stem, it was kind of tight to get your fingers in there to lift the buds.
Very weird, maybe somebody else will have some ideas.

I also thought about maybe cutworms, but have never heard of them bothering bloom stalks of spring bulbs, and chances are they could not have fit down in among the leaves for a cut as you describe.

Is it possible that the leaves grew to fast and tore the flowers off on the way up?
I've never heard of such a thing, but suppose maybe such a thing could happen, given just the right growing conditions.
Yes...hopefully someone else might have a clue. I'm sure it was very disappointing to have that happen to 1/2 of them.

Where did you purchase the bulbs? Big box store, or from an on line vendor. If from an on line vendor, I wonder if they might have an answer as to what may have happened. Possibly other customers have contacted them with the same problem.

Sue

Here is a link that might be useful: Various cutworms.