Olea's colony has met its demise

For sometime, I have been concerned about the viability of Olea's hive.  There has been no activity at the door, and lately I've seen no bees through the window.  Today, on an uncommon sunny day in the midst of all the rain, I decided to look inside.  At first I was wearing just my usual garden attire, but bees from the two other hives were harassing me, so I put on the bee suit.

Pile of dead bees on floor of hive

Heads down in cells

What I found were a lot of dead bees.  There was a pile on the floor of the hive and some on the frames.  Many bees were head down in the cells.  On close inspection, the bees had their tongues protruding.  These are signs of starvation and there wasn't a bit of honey anywhere.

Probable queen on left.  Note tongues.

I looked through the pile of bees and I think I found the queen.  When I stirred the bees about looking for the queen, I saw many small black flies that ran around rather than flying (like quails).  Phorid flies act that way.
I caught one and tried to identify it.  It has wing veins like a phorid and the femur looks right.  It is a darker color than the pictures, though.  I'm concluding that these are phorid flies.

I took out all the bars with comb and used my shop-vac to clean out all the dead bees, flies and debris.  I then used tweezers to pluck the bees and pupae out from the comb.  The pile of bees on the table attracted a blue jay who enjoyed an apian snack.
 I put all the bars with comb back in the hive and moved the false back forwards.  As usual, I don't know if I'm going about this properly.  I hope that there isn't a problem with pests such as the wax moth.  I intend to get a package in the spring for the hive.

Too cold to look

It's been too cold to go into the hives, but I'd really like to take a look and see what's going on.  I have real concerns regarding their viability.  I may be looking at three packages come spring.  If the colonies survive, I'll be re-queening.

Inside Olea's hive

Olea's hive has a window, so I can get a peek.  The number of bees seems to be declining, although they may just be  in a cluster.  I can also see several dead bees on the floor of the empty part of the hive.  The undertaker bees aren't doing their job and I suspect that that is not a good sign, although this may just be natural winter behavior. 

Under the lid of the new hive

I took a peek under the lids of the other two hives.  There was nothing in the old hive.  There were several dead bees in the new hive and one little fly that flew off.  Could these bees be victims of the Phorid fly?  There were also a lot of dead bees on the porch.

New hive porch

Dead bees and Phorid fly pupae

Speaking of Phorid flies, I had picked up 11 crawlers on the stones in front of the hives November 8 and 5 pupae resulted.  None of the pupae I have in containers have hatched yet.

On November 20, I was watching the girls and I noted two groups of bees on the rocks in the dry creek.  It looked like they were having some sort of meeting.