From: Barry Birkey <barry@birkey.com>
Date: Sat, 12 May 2001 19:41:42 -0500
To: <BiologicalBeekeeping@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: Re: Regression Questions

> winter in Missouri quite a few strong hives were frozen. How do the smaller
> bees handle six weeks of deep freeze in a row?

Hi Peter -

I can tell you how my smaller bees handled last winter. I had 2 colonies
that had been retrogressed to 4.9 foundation, starting from swarms in May.
They were both shaken down twice and one managed to pull out 2 deeps worth
of comb starting with full sheets of 4.9 foundation and the other 3 deeps.

I had a bout with EFB late in the summer but took action (without drugs).
Varroa hit me hard last year also, showing up in large numbers earlier than
ever before. Treated my 5.4 sized bees with Apistan and did nothing to the
4.9 hives. It was obvious these hives were keeping the mite in check. Went
into winter with 9 hives. Came out of winter with 2 hives. First year that I
have lost more than one hive over the winter.

Both 4.9 hives died, along with 5 of the bigger bees. I almost thought one
of the 4.9 hives would make it as it was still alive far beyond all the
other hives that parished. I'm not losing any sleep over this as most
beekeepers in this area lost a large portion of their hives last winter and
the extended cold period probably factored in to it. Erik, what was the
longest period your bees were 'house bound' this last winter? I know Erik
gets very cold winters too but his bees did fine.

Keep in mind that this was a first year episode and I don't expect it to be
repeated this winter as I am getting a jump on resizing the 2 remaining
hives because I have 4.9 comb to work with now. I have another experiment
going on this year too and I will report the outcome next spring.

Regards,
Barry