I placed this colony at a local Kindy in early 2024 and was recently contacted and informed the colony had died. I visited and opened the hive.
Upon inspection there were no pests, no bees, no honey at all, very little pollen but there was some empty brood cells. Looks to me as though there was just not enough food in the area.
As previous posts on this site have mentioned, conditions over the last couple of years have been poor and there have been many colony losses so this is not exactly unusual at the moment. Hopefully conditions are improving this year and this colony just declined too much before seeing the better conditions.
I replaced the hive with a Tc colony and will return to monitor the progress. If it declines it will have to be removed.
