Lets face it, 2020 was a tough year for all sorts of creatures. The bees had one hell of a year in 2020. We saw a couple of extreme cold snaps in late spring that destroyed the newly emerged spring forage. As a result the bees simply did not launch themselves into a productive year. We also saw some very serious 70 degree cold snaps in early fall which put pressure on the bee populations and killed off some very strong colonies almost immediately. Personally I lost 8 out of the 10 colonies I had going into Winter. I have similar reports from other beekeepers.
I fully expect my colonies with only 8 frames of bees to struggle and die off during the long winter months. But I and others saw huge 15 frame colonies with tons of resources simply die off.
2020 was also a year that I did not see a single wild swarm nor did I ever see any of my spring colonies show a sign of swarming. The resources simply did not come in and the reproductive signals never triggered.