This has been one of the strangest Winters in quite awhile.
We've had temps in the low 50's numerous times so far and the bees have been bringing in a pale yellow pollen.
Was checking out the three colonies my friend has and saw that one of the "stronger" colonies has finally died.
There were many dead bees on the comb and looks like they either starved or froze to death in place.
Recently he and I were doing an inspection on a warm day and we saw a few hundred bees and the queen in that hive along with plenty of honey stores left. Didn't look good at that point.
What was the "weakest" colony going into Winter is now booming! Still trying to figure that one out.
It has two deeps and a medium with lots of honey and they had eaten most of the sugar we placed on the inner cover.
Btw, that sugar did a great job absorbing moisture.
Earlier this Winter we removed a medium super from it that didn't have much honey stores.
But after seeing how full the hive is, I pulled a medium super full of honey off the dead hive and placed it on the "weak" hive.
Now they'll have a little more elbow room and more stores to chew on.
The third colony is still alive but the population is down. Not sure if that one will make it till Spring.
He is planning to split the "weak" hive at least once and maybe twice if things continue looking good.
I have a large silver maple out back and the buds at the top are starting to open. Looks like the top buds are three times the size of the buds toward the bottom. Seems a little early to me ,still waiting for the robins to show up.:waiting:
We had a winter as well. Despite not being very cold, a lot of beeks, including our area's experienced beeks, lost a lot of hives. Last year was a bad honey year. Periods of drought and then periods of heavy rain during our main flows.
We noticed a lot of hives the populations dwindled to the point it appears they could not generate enough numbers to keep warm, and then could not move to stores. Don't know if the queens could not get mated properly or they shut down brood very early and just didn't have enough young bees going into winter.
We also had problems with robbing in the fall. I will say this, my nucs with Carniolan queens from Tim Service, made it through the winter, despite being robbed heavy at times.
Checked my last surviving hive today and it I'd dead. I lost all four of my hives this winter. I had 2 full size hives and 2 nucs. On the bright side, I now have lots of drawn comb.
My neighborhood has tons of silver maples. Last winter, my first winter with bees, they really benefitted from the maples. I’m hoping for a nice boost again this year. Looking forward to a warm day when I’m off work to check stores and get an idea how my NUC is doing. It still has a pulse.
I hope it warms up soon. Not just for the bees but for me too. I'm ready for a spring. I lost few so far 4 or 5 out o f twenty. No sign of nosema according to my microscope samples. I think they just must not have been strong enough. As of yesterday they were looking good buzzing around. Now new losses. I am excited for the upcoming year.
I stopped in at my friend's house yesterday afternoon. He has 5 hives in Northampton County, PA and another 10 in New Jersey right where I-78 crosses the Delaware River. He was telling me that his bees were out flying this past Saturday. I live only about 15 miles from him. He is on the southern side of the Blue Mountain and I'm on the Northern side. The difference in temperature in those 15 miles was 12 degrees. While his bees enjoyed a nice 50 degree day, mine were all snuggled up inside.
The weather outlook for the next 10 days does not look good for the Pocono Mts. area. Two of those days are calling for highs of 42 and the rest are in the 20's and 30's. I checked on my 4 hives yesterday....some loud humming going on.
I did a quick check Friday afternoon of 2 hives at home and one is looking GREAT (cluster was about 10-12" diameter in a single, 7 frame deep box with some capped stores on top of the frames) while the other seems to have a smaller cluster than I'd like to see. There were a ton of bees dead on the bottom board which I didn't like to see. I think ventilation was an issue. I didn't know that the hole on the bottom was clogged leaving next to no air coming in other than the reduced entrance on top. So we'll see how things are in a month or so.
delber....are you using IPM bottoms? I'm using them with the mite tray in all the way and popsicle sticks below and above the inner cover. The popsicle sticks give a 1/8th gap for perfect ventilation. I've had very few dead bees this winter.
I'm actually using solid bottoms that I drilled a hole in and put 1/8" hardware cloth over to give ventilation. I'm using upper entrances so if I don't have a hole in the bottom water can build up and drown the bees. The hole was blocked with a couple dead (moldy) bees. I hadn't checked this hive really except popping the top since about October or so. I think the mountain camp method may be messing up things. I am seeing now that the sugar is awfully wet on top. Last year I wrapped the hives so once I put the sugar on I never went in until I was unwrapping them. It may be that the moisture is coming in from the sides, but if the cluster is putting off this much moisture I'm amazed!!! I did spray the sugar slightly near the entrance so that it didn't roll and close the hive off, but I'm still surprised that it's SOOO wet. I think this may be the reason for all of the dead bees. It may be that the sugar dripped back into the hive on top of the bees. That could be what did all of them in. For now there's a cluster there still, but it is small. So we'll see how they pull through.
Always remember that it's not the cold that will kill your bees, it's the moisture. That is, no doubt, why your bees are dying. You may want to consider converting to the IPM bottoms. You can even convert your existing bottoms to a screened bottom by cutting out the center and adding #5 hardware cloth. Your hives need to breath and if the dead bees are clogging your vent holes, it is defeating the purpose. If the holes are clogged, you won't have any air flow through the hives and will have a dead air space which is a prime factor for mold. Plus, as you stated, you are using top entrances rather than a bottom entrance which also limits any air intake on the bottom.
I haven't been able to look inside my hives since early December because of the cold, but I am seeing very few dead bees around the entrances. Before December, I started to notice some mold forming on the underside of the inner covers. That is when I inserted the popsicle sticks. We have had some very cold temps here with whole weeks in the single digits to teens as highs for the day, but the bees are doing well.
Recommend that on the very next day that you can get into your hives that you slightly raise your inner and outer covers. If you can't change your bottoms, add a popsicle stick between the rear corners of your bottom board and lower brood chamber. This will raise it slightly enough to generate air flow. See if this rectifies your problem.
Spring is in sight. You'd hate to lose your colonies so close to the finish line.
This is one of those loaded issues where if you ask a dozen beekeepers about it, you'll get 13 opinions. Cold can kill bees, just in a different way than moisture.
Thanks for your thoughts Mayday. I will seek to do something like this soon. It may be next year also that I won't use the mountain camp method as it seems that this has been the issue for me. (at least not until late in the winter when I know they're low on stores) I do have to agree with you about your conclusion though. I do think it was moisture that did them in. There was another hive that died early fall and I think this was the same reason. Man that's a stinky way to learn!!! I hate to loose good hives!!!
Well, my NUC with the small cluster finally gave up the ghost this week. I checked on them today. I made up the NUC much too late in the season and knew I would be lucky to get them through. This year all NUCs I plan to overwinter will be made in the Summer, no later than early July to give them time to strengthen up.
My two hives at home are still alive, will check on my other two at my brother's place tomorrow.
Another sad discovery.
The Nuc is dead.
While going through the supers I noticed there appeared to be two clusters. One in the third (top) deep and one in the middle deep.
It looked strong earlier this month and had food. They even had some sugar left on top of the inner cover.
This is a four frame Nuc with three deeps and now have 12 additional frames of comb and capped honey for Spring.
50% loss so far.
Checked my hives yesterday and all three were flying, even the two weaker ones. I will be VERY glad when it warms up enought to check on those two and see if they have queens.
I wanted to update you all on something from the weekend. . . I took pictures, but they're on the computer at home. I was walking around the house and saw deadnettle blooms!!! Spring is upon us!!! Hopefully this weekend will pan out. I heard in the 60's on Sunday? WOW!!! I'll attach a picture of the "flower" Scrolling down, it's the second picture that I have in my yard. Last year I had one bee come in that was working these, and I thought it was a different kind of bee entering the hive but no one else but me was concerned. The pollen is red and I guess because the flowers are so small they get the red pollen on their heads and it looks crazy. http://www.google.com/url?sa=i&sour...trCGQofPAsQU2xPQCLli2Y9A&ust=1362763911509240
My bee's have been cooped up for quite awhile and i'm sure come sunday there will be some happy bee's with the temps. getting in the mid fiftys here i can't wait i need to add a few frames of honey to a couple hives and maybe some sugar and some bee pro .
Soon it will be april and things will kick in . I know since i became a beekeeper spring sure is slow to come.
Nice warm day in these parts with heavy flying activity. I decided to check on both my hives at the house to see how their stores were doing. I also wanted to see where the cluster has been hanging out and get a pollen patty close by.
I first checked on the hive from a captured swarm from the other side of the state. They looked good. Plenty of stores. I checkerboarded the stores with emtpy comb above the brood nest. I did not see much capped brood, or larve here, but it looked like there were lots of eggs starting. I did catch the queen as she strolled across a frame. I painted her last summer and the mark was still intact.
I then checked my second hive. It was a bit stronger than the swarm hive, it too still had plenty of stored. I did the same procedure ... checkerboarding stores and empty comb above the bees, and a pollen patty near the brood nest. I did not see any larve in this hive yet either, but it also looked to have eggs. I also was lucky enough to spy this queen as she strolled across a frame.
I expect the hives to build up fast once this warmer weather finds us.
I will be checking my other two full sized hives at my brothers house tomorrow.
Happy days are here again. Well, I went through a few hives on Saturday, one hive had mice in it and was queenless with laying workers. I also have a nuc that is very weak and was thinking of moving them into a three frame queen castle to help keep them warm.I had thought about combining them but the laying workers would probably kill the queen! I checked one other nuc and it was packed with bees and food. Good luck to everybody, spring is in the air.:banana:
I had two hives that I checked yesterday and they were clearly bringing in loads of pollen here in Western PA. Some of the bees were completely covered in pollen. I'm not exactly sure where it's coming from but I'm excited.
2nd year beek up here in the armpit of the snowbelt of NW Pa. I had 2 hives side-by-side, almost identical strength. Went out yesterday, and found one flourishing and the other was dead. Lots of bees face first in the comb looking for honey. Sad thing is, after we cleaned out the box yesterday we took almost 7 frames of honey stores into the house that were right above them. They just never moved up for some reason..Bummer
No time to go through the hives this wekend but I decided to take a peek into the weakest one. It seemed to be dead. They were hiding in the middle box. When I tipped the box to look under, they shouted "Surprise!" and came out. First sting of the season. Spring is here!
Checked all 4 hives on Saturday. All very strong. Bringing in the Maple pollen. Bees coming back completely covered in pollen. Left the tar paper on the hives since we are expecting some colder weather on Wednesday all through the weekend. Plenty of stores left.
We still have 3 colonies left and they were all flying.
Not sure if I did the right thing but I added a pollen patty to each.
Picked them up from Ike at Forest Hill Woodworking. He gets them from Mann Lake.
Ike also lost quite a few colonies this winter.
Since it had warmed up I noticed them tearing into the moist sugar on the inner cover like that was all they had to eat.
But, they walk across numerous frames of honey and sugar syrup to get there.
Would have thought they'd eat the sugar last.
And saw some bees with dark orange pollen going in the hive.
Still cold and lots of snow up here in SNOW SHOE but all 12 of my hives are doing well and growing i seen new brood in one of my hives last time i checked them {around 2 weeks ago} man i can't wait till this s--- gos away i hate FEB and MARCH seems alls i do is worry about them dam bee's.
This winter has been looooooong.
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