A small hive has failed and here's all I know:

They were a small swarm to begin with.

They worked on and built up only one side of the 10 frame brood chamber

They were truculent in attitude

They appeared to be well enough a week ago.

Most of the population was dead on the floor of the hive

When I noticed a lack of activity yesterday when they should have been busy,
I had a look: their active frames containing brood cells had dried pale
skeletal remnants of fully developed bees whose heads had come off when the
other bees tried to remove them from the cell.

Everything had a sort of dry dry crumbly aspect

There were no mites or beetles I could find in the hive floor detritus.

Do not suggest that it was American foul brood unless you think it was
'European' foul brood. I know AFB well and this was not it. I've never seen EFB.

If this was some virus I've never seen it before.

Read the above carefully before giving your opinion, it's important.

Hello there,

Does anybody know of work that details how much forage (specifically
honey production per lb) for given crop types is produced per acre on
an average "summer".

I realise that there are a good deal of assumptions there but I
wondered if it was possible to give a rough order of magnitude rnage
for given crops/plants?

Thanks

Anybody here know anything about Tansy Ragwort and honeybees?

I'm in the Seattle area, dealing with a nasty infestation of Tansy
Ragwort on a "horse oriented" piece of land. By "dealing with", I mean
"attempting to totally exterminate" - the stuff is a nasty poison...