Well, not gone.  Dead.  Both hives.  As is the case with most dead-outs, definitive proof of the real cause is illusive.  I’ve only been through one box, the split that had the better, locally mated queen.  The cluster was in the bottom box, they’d never made it even into the second box.  My best guess is that after their flights on January 1st and 2nd when temps were in the low 50s, they settled back onto the partially-consumed frames in the bottom box.  The temps then plummetted and stayed low for about 5 weeks, which was just too long a time for them to go without a move.  I plan to go through the other hive on Friday, but I’m guessing I’ll find a very similar situation, a second and third box chock full of capped stores with a dead cluster in the bottom box.

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