What temperature low have you had to date?

[paintingpreacher]

12 degrees here yesterday morning.

[MapMan]

-37 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday morning at 5:37am.

MM

[Oldbee]

Any bees in Alaska in the area of MINUS 60F. the other day?

I don't know if 'Apis mellifera' is supposed to be native to Alaska. If there are any beekeepers in Alaska 'keeping bees', they are probably overwintering them indoors or, kill off their hives in the fall [at minus 40-60F.] Alaska winters can vary from region to region and temperatures can be mild at times compared to some northern states in the US.

[bleta12]

-3 here in CT, no wind, good time to start grafting, but I think there are not enough mature drones.

Gilman

[Ian]

-35 degrees C, and -48 degrees C wind chill, as my nifty little weather station said.
Got my bees inside, so they dont know the better,
but we have been trying to calve in this weather, 120 through this cold spell, hope the weather moderates to make the rest a little easier,

[cow pollinater]

but we have been trying to calve in this weather,

Ouch. I do feel for you on that one.

[loggermike]

On the other hand...We were in a different part of California this week working our hives where it was in the 70s all week. Nice and sunny,bees bringing in pollen

[vajerzy]

-1 degree F this morning.

[IndianaHoney]

-20 yesterday morning in Indiana.

That was cold enough! I just can not imagine those who have had -30's or colder.

[mlewis48]

-10 yesturday moring with wind chills at -20. This is the coldest that I have seen in a few years. I hope that it goes away and stays away. I am ready to get back out in the shop and complete my pre-spring chores!

[BuzzyBee]

-7 last month in north central Kansas

[Bizzybee]

8 here a couple of days ago. Coldest I've seen here since I moved down from Carolina in 97.

[dgl1948]

Minus 42 the other morning with windchill in the -50's. For the last 6 weeks we have seen more temps in the -30's than I can remember. Now we are going to see a few days of temps around the thaw mark.

[fatscher]

I was sure a Florida beek would chime in with some figure in the low 60's.

To you Wisconsinites (and Canadians) who endure -30F and below--I can't imagine. I dealt with similar temps once in a cold snap in Illinois and after a couple minutes outside, my body began to feel true pain.

[Hobie]

You know, you guys that get down to the -40 range don't have to specify degrees F or C!

I feel for you. My nose froze at -10F. Today it's 20 and I was wearing only a sweatshirt outside. (well, not ONLY a sweatshirt! )

[Ian]

One thing about cold weather like ours is the humidity is very low,
I have been to Toronto in mid Dec, with temps around -10degrees C, I had left Winnipeg with -25 degrees C. I tell you, I would take the dry cold over that wet chill anyday!

Its the wind that really gets us here,

[kbee]

It got to about 0 here and with the wind chill to about -15. We have had more snow this year, a little over 100 inches so far. I can't get to the hives but hope the snow has insulated them some. They looked OK in Dec. Hope the peach and plum blossom buds make it.

[Walliebee]

We had 7 degrees F here in Chapel Hill, NC. That falls right in line with our 30 year average. (USDA zone 7a) I guess the interesting thing is it's the coldest we've seen in 5 years. It's good to be on track having an average year. Let's hope we can have average rainfall this year for a change!

[mwjohnson]

Minus 23F a couple of nights last week, daytime high of - 8F in between them, lotta wind.
I'm hoping to get lucky, my hives are almost snowed over .
Burned a 1/4 tank of oil last week...

Anybody notice we get a real winter every 4 years?
'96, 2000, '04 were all real, this ones shaping up, too.

[chillardbee]

To date, in the 2008/2009 winter we have been as low -14 celsius but with a wind chill factor of -25 (those were pretty high winds) during an artic outflow we had somewhere around the middle of December.
We have had a lot of snow since and it stuck around for the longest I've ever seen it in the last 20 years since i've been keeping mental track of the weather. right now it's 10 celsius, sunny, and calm. all the snow has melt away already.
It has been a long time since I've seen such a relatively dry cool winter for the bees. I checked up on them a week ago and they still have lots of stores and are clustered very nicely. If the weather continues this pattern, I think we'll have better than a half decent early spring build up. It's been awhile since our bees have been able to capitalize on the hazel nut pollen in February.
Most of the past ten years have been less then average. This year though holds a glimmer of hope that not only will we not have to worry about them starving but that we might actually be able to have a regular production year.