Our Bees are GONE!

As new beekeepers this year, we’ve been immersed in the wonder of the world of bees. 

With our friends John and Julie Monroe, we have taken classes, purchased equipment, painted beautiful designs on our hives, and nurtured our 10,000 bees to over 50,000 in just a few months.  Rob and John would hang out with the bees and watch them for hours. 

Julie even bought John a Go-Pro so he could film the amazing activities he observed.  The last time Rob checked the hives, the hives were almost full of honey! And to think in just a few weeks, we expect to receive our new Flow Hive – Honey on Tap beehives from Australia.  So you could just imagine our disappointment when Rob found that both hives are completely empty.

At first we thought that they swarmed to find more food or a better climate, but I just recently read about how bees sometimes ABSCOND.  Okay, I had to look up this word because I couldn’t make any sense of it.  When bees swarm, they split into smaller colonies but some of the bees usually stay behind. 

In our case, ALL OF THE BEES are gone and they even took all of their honey with them! What gives? 

Do you have any ideas about what went wrong and what we can do to prevent this from happening again?