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-15 tonight---Might test my girls!

4K views 19 replies 16 participants last post by  Yuleluder 
#1 ·
Predicting -15 degrees F tonight in my neck of the woods. If they make it thru the next few days, I'll be hopeful we can make it the rest of the way thru winter.

I'm tired of winter.

Chris
 
#2 ·
Same here. Sick of winter. Since last Tuesday we have had 2 1/2 feet of snow and 2" of ice. Last Saturday was -16° and Monday's low was -10°. We are expecting another 1/2 foot of snow tonight. The AM predicted lows for Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday are -10°, -8°, -3°, and 2°. More snow on Tuesday.

Sick of winter with 12 weeks to go.

I lost two hives already.
 
#12 ·
And more coming tonight/tomorrow. And last I heard they are saying even possibly more Tuesday of next week.

I like the snow, but I don't like getting walloped by it all the time..
 
#8 ·
Ditto, Indianhead of WI.;)
Tonight
Partly cloudy. Lows 21 below to 26 below zero. Northwest wind 5 to 10 mph until early morning becoming light.


Lot of days without a cleansing flight and temps low for cluster adjustment/to relocate stores.
Sustained temps, little sun, without a break for days, kinda tuff on them.
(and us)
Stay Warm !

BM
 
#10 ·
Hard freeze tonight. 16 degrees above is about as cold as it gets around here. What makes it bad is that nothing is built for this in Texas. Pipes freeze, furnace cannot keep up, people do not know how to drive, etc. Only 5 weeks left and then it gets in the 80s. You cats up in Wisconsin are hardcore. If I lived up there I would drive to work in a bulldozer.
 
#16 · (Edited)
-27 here this morning. The cold water in the kitchen has been frozen for a cpl days now. This morning the hot water faucet is frozen. That's cold enuf for me, thank you.

A transformer must have blown somewhere up the line from me. Power was out for about an hour. That was my signal to get out my Xmas present, flannel lined blu jeans and long johns. It's hard to get a stove going and producing heat when it has gone out during the night. Back in the days when wood heat was all we had i remember waking up during the night to stoke the fire. Maybe that's why I am still always so tired. All those lost hrs of sleep.

Wood stove for warmth, microwave for my oatmeal and kerosene stove for my sausage. Technological confusing?
 
#17 ·
Look on the bright side gents, you could of had our weather?
Minus 47 C, yesterday!
About the same for a while now, won't end until the end of the week - if they are right?
They had predicted -50 for last night. Could have been that cold too, did not check until I got up at 8 in the morning and it was the same as yesterday.
Wife is joking, that in weather like this we don't need to use the fridge. :)

Our two little dogs don't think it's funny at all, when we got to chase them out back for a P :D
 
#19 ·
Days get longer and warmer. Queen starts up egg laying. Warmer heat from sun causing to many bees to fly out only to fall to the ground frozen. Food consumption goes up and brood area expands. Cold spell comes. Bees cluster up tight around brood. Uh oh, now the food is to far away. Dead bees now if warm weather doesn't came back soon so they can get back to the food.
 
#20 ·
I just found two dead outs in one of my yards on Sunday. Both had some fairly large patches of capped brood, things got cold and they starved with honey right above them in the next box. One colony looked like some of the bees decided to head for honey while others stayed with the brood. The bees that stayed with the brood starved(heads in cells) and the bees that went to the honey look they froze out(very small cluster).

Bees will die from cold if they do not have a large enough cluster to keep themselves warm. Its very similar to base board heating. For instance a baseboard with only 100F water flowing through it will only be able to heat a house to say 70F at 32F outside. If the outdoor temperature goes even lower then the baseboards will no longer be able to heat the house to 70F without increasing the water temperature. Therefore I would have to assume a single honey bee can only produce so much heat. So one would guess there is a "breaking point" for a specific amount of bees in a cluster. I would guess that a larger cluster could generater much more heat at lower temperatures then say a cluster that is the size of a baseball.
 
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