Not only that, but the robbers killed my hives.

Last weekend I noticed that my bee traffic was way down. Thenext morning Iopened the hives to see that I had moths AND mites (work has forced me to be kinda lax in my beekeeping for the past 3 months). I rearranged frames in teh supers to prepare for a harves this weekend, but didn't have a chance, as that afternoon the bees got thick all around the hives. I blocked some of the entrance, but I think I was too late as the hives were already weak. I'd guess I lost a full super, plus another 20 lbs in the brood area. WhenI was able to get to the hives today, I was able to find my queen in one hive (dead), and vast amounts of ripped open, formerly capped, honey. I brought in one frame of mostly pollen for my observation hive...as I was cleaning out the dead brood, I found that some of the brood were still alive (and waiting to be helped out of their cells). And some of those had mites on them. This is the first time I've observed so many mites up close. (I'm freezing that frame and will put it in the obs. hive in the morning....plus treat for mites. Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrg. Hopefully,I can use the obs hive as a nuc to restart at least one of my main hives.) The robbing bees were very different than my yugo-carnolians. they were larger and had a relatively light/golden body, with a very dark tail end,also there were suprisingly docile towards me....dunno if someone is wintering hives near me, or if these are feral bees....but there were a lot of them!

Learned a valuable lesson about procrastination,

-dr