We've had to listen to Jolly Ollie brag all year about all the swarms he's caught so let's see how well he does at keeping them alive all winter.
We'll go by number of hives lost beginning October 1, 2012 thru March 1, 2013. Check in with the number of hives you have as of October 1st. if you want to participate so get done with all your combines and such before then.
Ollie may be old, bald and cheap but he's as honest as they come so we'll go by the honor system like we did the swarm challenge. Last I heard, Ollie had 60 hives. Is that right Ollie?
I didn't register, but I lost 1 of 2 during our first Jan cold spell. I overwintered mine in a chicken coop. After the first one died, I decided to use a heat lamp with a thermostat which turned on at around 35 deg, and off at 40 deg during our second Jan cold spell. Door to coop was shut (dark) until just today when I wrestled out the surviving hive and put them in the 51 deg sun for the first time this year. No brood or eggs (I assume because it was dark). Took video of them flying about happily and put it on my blog (http://jorgedenton.blogspot.com/). I did see the queen.
If I am remembering properly, I started with a total of 11 and have 10 left now. The one I lost was a nuc and as with all my hives was food challenged this year due to a drought and they just didn't have the # of bees to handle some of the cold snaps. That's a little under a 10% loss rate which I guess I'll be happy with. No mite treatments going into this winter either bTW.
Went into winter with 8 hives, lost two strong double deep ten framers. No treatments going into winter. Treated remaining hives in February with OAV. The other 6 hives had a big brood break over last summer due to no forage, only fed enough to get them through summer and then fed heavily in September.
So, I am 6 for 8.........25% loss.
Went to see them in the almonds yesterday and man were they ever pissy!! I was greeted by a face bumper before I even got within 30 feet of the hives. Kinda weird since they are all normally docile. All heck broke loose when I popped the tops and was inserting the frame feeders, ended up having to use the cover to block half the open top so I could pour the syrup in the feeder, it was the only thing that kept them calm!! Took one sting through the sweat pants, first sting of the year and hardly any reaction, so that's good! I checked infront of the hives and didn't see activity of skunks. Did find out that the farmer had sprayed a pheromone on his crop to attract bees, maybe that's the cause?
12 hives in summer, took some loses in autumn, bad queens. Down to 8. Winter was so warm like a heat wave until Feb, trouble is trees, birds and bees thought it was spring, a month of frost n snow has left me with no live bees. Just loads of sealed dead brood.
Well here is my report out. I started the winter with 6 hives and finished with 6 hives. One is very weak but looks like it will pull through. This was much better than last year when I went into the winter with 7 and finished with 3.
Thanks squarepeg and I did. I treated for varroa mites three times last year (three different kinds of treatments) - April, late July, and late October.
I'm disappointed but not discouraged. Lost 1 out of 7 or 14%, but was going for zero loss. Better than last year though when I had 17% loss. Had two 60 deg. F days over the weekend when I inspected, tore down, and scraped all the wooden ware from the dead-out. Had fed 30# of 2:1 syrup through the Fall plus some "Ted's mush" during the early winter. Maximum V-mite in early Fall was ~5 per day on a 72 hour mite drop count. Housed in a double deep plus medium, insulated and tar paper wrapped. All Italians or degraded Italian muts. All colonies are medication free.
Postmortem: Low population (softball sized ?), honey/syrup on opposite side of occupied frames, minimal V-mites, well protected from the weather and cold. It is possible that they went queenless. Determined to get to my zero loss in 2013-14 winter.
March is the snowiest month of the year here in Colorado. Have 2 inches already today and it is still coming down.
Started with 2 hives and 2 nucs in fall. Both hives are entering their 4th winter. Lost a queen in one so combined it with a nuc. It's doing great. The nuc has been converted to a standard hive. The other original hive may be on its last leg. Not much activity - but some. And still bringing in pollen. I'm figuring I may lose it.
Took 3 into winter. Came out with 3. All 3 in double deeps busting with bees. Treatment free. For me it seems harder to get through the summer and fall because of the SHB. I lost 5 hives last fall.
ApiStan is Fluvalinate which I understand the mites have developed resistance to over the many years it has been used. Why not get away from the "hard" chemicals and use something like Apiguard for your post flow treatment?
Late summer, I had 8 hives with 10 frames of population.
On september the 4, I have made 4 walk away splits .
3 of them had a new laying queen, the other was laying workers and off.
1 more get robbed of wasps , because it was upside down (animal or bandalism) and the lid was out.
So I went in winter with 4 hives and 6 nucs.
But I had not feed in fall with pollen patties , because I thought there was natural pollen , and there wasn't any, so no fall brood, no winter bees, low population , big losses.
Final result . 5 overwintered hives/nucs, with 6 frames of population and 3 frames of brood now.
LESSON IS LEARNED.
Sorry about my delay in reporting. Went in with 15, and currently coming out of this challenge (Lord knows the winter is not over here) with 13. Lost a first year hive to starvation, although they had about nine full frames of honey in the super underneath them, should have caught this in the fall. My other lost was a second year hive that absconded, they originally came from a cutout, but their genetics will live on (time will tell if this is a good thing or not) because I made a split from them last spring. I can't believe they didn't like my accomodationsSo my lost was 13.333 percent.
Went in yesterday to check stores. It appears I'm going to lose another. Very small cluster. In the others, I'm starting to see increased population, stores low, taking candy and pollen substiyute.
Here are two videos I took on 3-5-13 of two of my hives that are growing fast and needed to be moved into a larger hive for more space. (Colonies GROWING in Western Washington State) You can see the queens and the frame of bees and capped brood. My bees are overwintering fantastically.
Every hive I check has eggs and brood, is healthy, growing and active.
A DRAMATIC difference from when I tried to over winter hives with the original queen of unknown quality and genetics that came with the nucs or packages I had purchased. My management style was the same..The only real difference now, I have my own home raised queens with proven hardy Northern genetics heading the hives.
More photos and info on facebook page. Yes, I am feeding protein patties.I started four weeks ago giving them dry Bee Pro in an outdoor feeder, when the bees started going after the bag of corn in the barn. And they all have sugar bricks weather they need them or not. Most hives are still very heavy, but they like my sugar brick recipe and like the accessibility to them-right above the cluster.
Below you can see the space in the center between the sugar. Two weeks ago, that space held a big protein patty! Totally consumed and licked clean.
I doubled the size of the patty this time.
Give them a puff and they scadaddle down so I can apply the patty without casualties.
Here's some spare mini deep frames filled for spring feeding or mating nucs:
Here's my BeeWeaver daughter queen..overwintering very well. Original Beeweaver queen overwintered very well in 2011-2012 too.
The only hives I lost were no surprise. Most were gone by fall. Many of the nucs I bought last spring were duds. I just let them go rather than baby them and medicate them. I made the mistake of leaving the original queens with the colonies. They were huge and good looking,. They were basically the only colonies I have lost.
I am at 63 strong colonies + five that have a queen and half frame or so of bees. Even those five are growing and have capped brood and eggs. They all just seem content. No lathargic little clusters stuck in a corner.
Lauri man you have some nice bee equipment and it sounds like you know your bee's good luck this coming year.
We are going to be in the uper 50s this sunday and i have 12 hives a hummin 4 are lite so i'm going to top off mine with sugar .
Can't wait till next month.
Nice pic's, and yes April will be a busy month for us here in this part of the country.
cg3, I hope your very small cluster will pull through ok, the weather is looking a bit better now.
Charlie, thanks for helping all of us get through the winter by creating this thread to have something to look forward to each day, I really enjoyed it.
Well the bee's where flying today and it's going to be just as nice tomorro i'm going to add some honey and sugar to my lite ones {2 hives and 2 nucs}I'm going to say i ended up with 10 hives and 2 nucs i hit my goal plus 2
Home yard with 33 starting 19 died - 58% loss
Outyards 49 started 14 died - 28.5% loss
Sites with harshest climate had best survival rates. Outyards averaged 3 hives per yard starting. So my yard with 33 and friend's yard with 12 both had large losses, similar climate. Maybe crowding plays a roll also. Maybe I should move my trailers to the harsher climate sites in September. What date?
Did I win?
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