Last year I bought 2 beehives from a local keeper, and one of the 2 abandoned the hive within the first 2 months: I visited the other hive a few months later and it seemed they too had abandoned the hive, as there seemed to only be a few stragglers in the hive.

This made me give up on the idea of bothering with bees, I didn’t want to be part of the problem. They have enough struggles without an inexperienced keeper killing them off or whatever.

This week when I mowed the property that the hives were on, I went to check to see if there was honey left in the second hive when it was abandoned, only to find it is actually not empty but thriving. I may give it a year of working this hive and try to catch a local swarm when someone needs help with that to put in the empty hive.