That’s a crying shame. Any desire to get back into it? This will be my third year.
Back in the late 90’s we had severe colony death problems, mites were blamed. I lost all my bees. We still have no bees locally. There are acres of white clover at the near by state bark but no bees
I put up a notice at the volunteer fire department to call me if a swarm showed up. I always got calls and collected swarms but they could not be sustained.
One year I did not clean up the dead hive. Wax moths invaded and made the worst mess you can imagine. One day I saw bee going into the wreck. Then another and then another. I opened it up and a swarm had occupied the hive and cleaned up enough to get started. They were drawing wax on the empty frames on the plastic wax base!. I was (and still am) ashamed of allowing the mess to not be cleaned up. I then jumped in and cleaned it all up and put in new wax in the brood chamber and one super. They did well but did not survive the winter... they just perished.
I quit. I sold most of my stuff and gave one complete hive, smoker, veil, gloves etc to a 16 year old boy that was busting at the seam to have some bees
The question always was...... do I have bees or do bees have me?