"It only takes a week or two, we can have wet weather and the bees all of a sudden don't have any ability to source any nectar or food for themselves, so they eat the honey that's in the hive."
Udy realised this could not be the case after students told him the frames were completely empty and did not even have their wax cells left on them, which bees would not eat.
"Bees will start putting what we call foundation onto the frames, which is basically the wax, then they put honey into the cells."
He said that the next possibility was that a student had taken out the full frames and replaced them to give the bees room and stop the hives becoming honey-logged.
"That would have made sense. But we haven't been able to find any student who has owned up and said 'yes, we did that'.''
He said that it seemed very unlikely that the culprit was a sticky-fingered thief because the frames appeared to have been replaced considerately with nothing else touched.
"If I was a thief, I don't think I would have done that."
"A true thief would take the bees, the most valuable component of a hive is the bees and the hive itself."
The two-week window where the honey could have disappeared has made it too difficult to investigate comings and goings through video footage.
"For us it has been impossible using video footage to identify any unscrupulous sort of activity with a vehicle going up the hill."
He said everyone is stuck on working out what the next step to solving the mystery could be.
"It's a very unusual situation."
