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winter losses

13K views 80 replies 39 participants last post by  loggermike 
#1 ·
Ok this was my second winter. The first year I had 2 hives this past winter I over wintered 11 hives and one nuc. My bees are mostly on natural cell sizes. I did combine a couple late splits and swarms that did not build up enough to make it through the winter. I have not lost a hive as of yet. My question is what am I doing if any thing that has kept me from loosing any hives?

What are the the losses of other on here and what do you use for treatment of V mites?

As a side note I over wintered in 2 mediums for most hives and a couple had 3 mediums.
 
#2 ·
Had 6 last fall, 5 now. The dead one was robbed within an inch of it's life last fall. Lesson learned.

Everything was in double deeps except one in a shallow and a deep.

I used one dose of vaporized oxalic on my packages before they capped any brood, and three doses five days apart on my two overwintered hives. All had low to no natural mite drops in late summer, so I only treated once last year.
 
#3 ·
Only had 3 hives going into winter and still only have 3 hives.
Bees are doing well. In fact there are alot of bees in the hives with plenty of stores left. I think it helps to have a small number of hives. The individualized care and attention you can give to your hives is much greater then someone with 50 or more hives. I treated with fmgo/thymol all year and OA vapor in the fall.

Dan
 
#6 ·
Dickm and WG Bee, How many hives and what type mite treatments do you use?

WG I think the 10% is very good numbers compared to many others losses like Dicks. I can understand with more hives you will have more likely hood of losses. I am really shocked how many hives people loose. With 30-50% losses each year it would be hard to run a commercial bee business. I want to get up to 100 or more hives. I hope to never see over a 20% loss but I am sure everyone has a bad year from time to time.
 
#8 ·
"I did combine a couple late splits and swarms that did not build up enough to make it through the winter. I have not lost a hive as of yet. My question is what am I doing if any thing that has kept me from loosing any hives?"

Well, for one thing, you are following the old beekeeping maxim handed down to us by Farrar:

"Take your Winter losses in the Fall."
 
#11 ·
Lost a large hive that had a high mite infestation last fall. I treated with OA, but they continued to drop mites.
In Feb. they moved up through a medium of honey stores and looked like they were trying to escape through the inner cover. They died there.
Mites were still falling through the SBB when there was no evidence of living bees in the hive.
 
#12 ·
Hillbillynursery, I started last winter with 96 hives and 75 nucs. I treated approx. 40% of the hives with Apistan and all hives with menthol(shop towels) only after checking groups of 5 hives with the sugar shake method. This was done approx. at the middle of Sept. only because I didn't get around to it in August. I also put a one pound Pollen Protein Pattie on each hive in Sept. to make sure I went into the winter with adequate winter cluster. At the first of October I combined the weakest colonies that I felt I would lose anyway during the up coming winter. During this time I was feeding all colonies that appeared to need feed. I packed it into them.
I have been raising SMR Carniolans and SMR Minn. Hygenic Italians for the last 5 years and have all my hives requeened with what I raise. I have lost so far 8 hives out of 96. This works out to be 8.33%. I have not been able to check all the hives again since 2-22-05 as some are in VA and bad weather keeps me from getting up the logging road where they are.
The 5 frame nucs I overwintered I have dbl stacked. In the rush to bottle honey,prep the hives for winter, work a day time job and sell honey on weekends; I forgot to test and treat. Some of the nucs I did not even dbl stack. All the singles that had Italians died, some of the singles that had Carniolans survived, but needed feeding in Feb.. The dbl stacked nucs most of them survived some with Italians and some with Carniolans. I counted up in Feb. I had lost about 30% but I expect this to increase to +/- 50% nuc lose. A single 5 frame nuc is not enough to survive the winter in my opinion, but dbl stacked losses are not as bad.
 
#15 ·
>>40 to 50% losses

Ouch, what happened dickm

My losses are unknown right now, but my primary estimite is around 15-20%. I am having problems with starvation this winter. Due to abnormalaly long brooding in the fall, causing too much early consumption of stores, and me not putting enough away for them!!
Leason learned. To think that I am the one that preaches "feed in the fall, not spring"!!
 
#17 ·
Ian,
I expect some losses because I keep everything except O/A and FGMO out of the hives. Right now I have 9 or 10 left alive of 18. 1 starved. 1 was toosmall to make it. The others had plenty of feed and seemed to have enough mass in the fall. I'm speculating that the queens didn't do a good enough job. Bees are carniolans. wintered in 1 deep +2 or 3 supers. In one there was a perfect pyramid of dead bees under the cluster. Looked like they gradually dropped off the cluster into a pile. 9 of the 18 I started the winter with were packages in the spring. I treated them all 3X with O/A 7 days apart in late Sept, early Oct. Mite counts were down. I talked to a commercial guy this winter who lost 45% and he said it happens that way to all of them, every year.

Dickm
 
#18 ·
--I treated them all 3X with O/A 7 days apart in late Sept.

Dickm,
O/A will kill honeybee larve up to about one week of age. It is possible now that the O/A treatment 3 weeks apart may have wiped out 3 weeks of brood in the process. These would be your ‘winter bees’ necessary for successful wintering. The population may have looked fine, but I suspect that those may have been mostly summer bees that would have fallen away in early winter due to natural attrition, but at this point, few winter bees would have been hatching to replace them.
 
#19 ·
It's lookin' like my losses are in the 25 to 30 percent range. Tough year for me; I've never lost that many. Every one I've seen so far cold-starved. I didn't get any honey from soybeans (which I had counted on), and so they went into winter with few stores. I couldn't get 'em to take sugarwater in the late fall, so...

I noticed all my hives in singles did well- I think I'll try wintering in singles instead of double deeps this year. Besides, I'd like to utilize my boxes better anyway. I just can't keep my numbers up. I'm going to make a ton of summer splits this year and build them up on soybeans (IF they'll produce this year).
 
#21 ·
I lost one of my 4 hives to mice last fall. I did not reduce the entrances early enough and they got into one of the hives. I actually trapped 4 mice INSIDE the hive, and yet I had had the hive open just a week before I reduced the entrance!

I was really shocked because it was my strongest hives and the bees were still active and flying.

Live and learn. Next year I will get some hardware cloth on the openings in September!

And, I will reduce the entrance on the SAME HOUR as I do a Fall check! :mad:
 
#24 ·
Naturebee,
I thought that O/A (evaporated) didn't harm brood. I am surprised to hear that it does. Can you give me a source for that information?

Ian,
To correct myself, I think my friend was referring to all migratory beekeepers, every year. His bees were requeened every spring, fed often but stressed by many moves and medications.
Did you have a long warm fall? What kind of bees do you run? What Tx. Is 20% normal for you?

Dickm
 
#25 ·
20% is a bit high, but I fear it may be pushing 30%. All depend on the weather now, and the ability for me to get feeding into them. Last year I hugged 9%, but ususlly comfortable around 15%. Most of my primary losses are starved
Yes a long brooding, into Nov. promoted big wintering clusters, which is great but big clusters means high food intake. Compounded with an above normal winter to the most part, probably accompanied with brooding early on = starvation. I should of made another round last fall, hind sight is 20-20.
Some yards are 30-40% losses, others are 2-5% losses.
 
#26 ·
DickM,
At the Beekeeping Seminar at Penn State, I believe it was Flottum that stated OA will kill brood up to 7 days old. I cannot find reference to back that up, but an abstract to a related study on this link, that makes reference to a 5 day kill..

http://www.edpsciences.org/articles/apido/abs/2004/05/M4027/M4027.html

FYI- At the seminar, they highly recommended a drone removal routine for mite control, as very effective in mite control. There seems to be a TOP priority from the bee experts here in PA to push non-chemical methods, as they mentioned they are discovering an accumulative build up of contaminates in comb which they are theorizing is the cause a high number of queen failures in honeybee colonies we are seeing now. IMO, timing this for removal of capped brood for the first week in July thru till about the first week in August would be most effective then, and less costly for the bees and beekeeper.

On a related mater of interest, I have observed mature feral colonies that are not effected much by varroa. The one of the things they have in common is a very large amount of empty comb (open broodnest). An open broodnest is essential to the health of a colony. So part of my routine includes keeping an unrestricted broodnest in my colonies, especially on about the beginning of July when an open broodnest can aid in the colonies ability to ‘out brood’ the mites and at the same time permit adequate room for brooding winter bees. And also as Bro Adam states “An unrestricted brood nest from the end of May till the end of July is an absolute essential in regions where there is a late honey flow”.
 
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