We received beginning of June 2014 our first 3 bee hives. During the summer and into the autumn the bees developed great. The red hive seemed to wanted to swarm in late September, but I was able to prevent it and even substitute the queen as I had the understanding the old queen has died. Perhaps it was not trying to swarm in the first place and only missing the queen already. I am not sure what really happened.
The reason I am writing today is, that I sadly discovered today that the same red bee hive died. Today I found only dead bees. Thousands of dead bees. It is very sad to loose bees. So this is not such a great Christmas after all for me. I hope I did not made a mistake in September with the read hive and this is in the end my fault.
The other 2 hives are have been active today and did their house cleaning. So I assume everything is going good for these two.