Honey Bee World

Hi, I hope someone can suggest what might be going on here in Iowa on May 24, 2017. I checked my hives and the lids were covered with bee parts. Mostly abdomens. Like 2-3 dozen on the top of each hive. I have five hives. Two of which were walk away splits two weeks ago.

If I had to guess, I would say some kind of predatory insect was killing them. Praying mantises would be my first guess. I have seen praying mantises sitting on just about every single 5 frame mating nuc (20+) in a beeyard before, with some nucs having multiple praying mantises on it.

That mating yard consistently had 90%-95% mating success.

I never paid attention to whether or not there were bee parts from the mantises eating bees.