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worst winter ever?

43K views 117 replies 46 participants last post by  soupcan 
#1 ·
Just back from a talk by Jeff Pettis from the Beltsville bee lab. He said this may be the worst winter in history for bee losses. Says many producers are in the 50% loss range.

He also was reporting that poor queens and drone layers appear to have around 50% of their sperm sterile. He is continuing this research about why this is happening. Doesn't have an answer but believes this is one of the causes of bee loss.
 
#2 ·
Apparently losses have been very high here in TN. I suspect that it is because our usual summer dearth started a month earlier than usual and there was little if any fall flow - on average we went into winter with hives that had been weakened by malnutrition. In other words bee keeper error in June and July.
 
#5 ·
very interesting cam, thanks for the report.

after three years of zero winter losses i had 33% this year. queen failure was the primary reason, but i don't know why they failed.

please keep us posted.
 
#21 ·
I lost about the same percentage and for the exact Same reason. Every hive with failed queen had a fair amount of bees left with unfertilized cells in the middle of the frame. In some live hives I could see a few cells with unfertilizer in the worker brood-looks like failing queen. I 've never seen it so consistantly throughout the hives. Needless to say, I'll have to re-queen yearly to minimize this problem.

I tried to reason out the cause and can't say for sure. Last year, I did have heavier then normal mite loads which started earlier, do to the non-existant winter. I had to treat w/formic 2X's.
I migrate between PA and SC so queens don't get much of a break.
I had higher then expected mite loads already this spring so I did a knock down treatment in mid-Jan(sounds early but the weather was warmer then average by at least a couple weeks at that point) before making nucs in March.
Of course, poor nutrition or poor mating conditions seem to play a big part too.

Please post if you find the cause for your losses!
 
#8 ·
Says many producers are in the 50% loss range.

He also was reporting that poor queens and drone layers appear to have around 50% of their sperm sterile. He is continuing this research about why this is happening. Doesn't have an answer but believes this is one of the causes of bee loss.
when he says producers, I assume he means queen producers?
 
#10 ·
I'm at about 50% loss, at this point I believe it is due to mites weakening the winter bee population down to a small cluster, which then perished because they couldn't move to new food. There could be something to the malnutrition thing with me also, as we had a very poor fall flow. John
 
#16 ·
Stromnessbees - If you mean me, I'm not asserting that anyone has lost their skills, but that we did what we always do, but the weather did something different. We failed to adapt. I think that the effects of agg chemicals are also significant, probably extremely so - I just think that the losses this year coincide with the unusual weather and associated dearth last summer.

Keith - Thanks. I also suspect that the hives that are left in good shape now were probably the most adept robbers last summer.
 
#18 ·
We over winter & 2010 to 2011 losses were around 15%.
2011 to 2012 winter loss was below 4%.
As of today our winter loss is close to 50%.
We start our winter loss count about 1 month after we finish pulling the last honey off & begin to feed the bees to heavy them up for winter.
All hives have insulated winter covers installed along with a 15# pound candy board for safe keeping thru the winter.
The honey flow started last April & lasted untill the middle of September.
We made a good honey crop, probably a crop that ranks up there with one of the better ones in the past 30 years. So the bees were in real good shape.
The bee loss are among new queens, ( 4 different breeders ) old queens, & cells that we raised here in Nebr.
Queen people were telling me in early January as to all the early calls for queens & packages and to all the losses already this early.
So now that leaves us with one heck of a bill for testing of bees, pollen, wax, & honey
that I figured would show nothing when I sent the samples in for testing.
And that's just what the tests showed, nothing, nothing other than how clean the tests were.
So I am getting old and also they tell me I have forgot how to keep bees & or I no longer remember how to get them in shape for winter.
I always tell my son if this deal was easy everyone would keep bees & yet I have seen that deal come & go a good many times in my lifetime with bees!
Something has got to change & change before there is nothing left us to change!!!
 
#22 ·
So far, only one dead-out in 12 hives. I know we came through one of the worse droughts last summer that I can remember. So I put 15 # candy boards on all hives. Two weeks ago, some hives only had a few pounds left.
 
#24 ·
I have 1 of 4 yards that's struggling hard with about 50% losses.

The area surrounding the one yard had no fall flowers to speak of because of the drought and even though I left the bees heavy with honey I believe now that they were short on pollen in the fall and didn't raise enough fall and winter bees.

My other 3 yards combined that had decent fall forage I have only lost 1 hive to date.

From now on I check bee bread reserves as well as honey reserves in the early fall.


Don
 
#26 · (Edited)
I'd strongly suggest everybody with losses pack up about 100 to 150 of the dead bees according to the Bee Lab's instructions and send them in.

Include a short description of the problem along with your name, address, phone number, or email.
For additional information, contact Bart Smith by phone (301) 504-8821 or email bart.smith@ars.usda.gov
A comb sample should be at least 2" x 2" and contain as much dead or discolored brood as possible. NO HONEY SHOULD BE PRESENT IN THE SAMPLE. Wrap loosely in a paper towel, then paper bag, then cardboard box, NO PLASTIC, NO FOIL, NO WAX PAPER, NO TIN, NO GLASS.

Send sample to:

Bee Disease Diagnosis
Bee Research Laboratory
Building 476, Room 204
Beltsville Agricultural Research Center-East
Beltsville, MD 20705

Send at least 100 bees, and if possible, send bees that are dying or died recently. DECAYED BEES ARE NOT SATISFACTORY FOR EXAMINATION. Soak bees in 70% ethyl, methyl, or isopropyl alcohol as soon as possible after collection, and packed in leak-proof containers. UPS, USPS, and Fed-Ex do not accept shipments of alcohol. Just prior to mailing off samples, pour off all excess alcohol to meet shipping requirements.

Hope this helps. I'd further suggest setting up an observer hive or three, and watching very closely what is going on. Also, it appears that August 15th is the deadline for final mite treatments before wintering in many areas (interpreted as August first!)

From the postings, the combination of a prolonged nectar and/or pollen dearth, mites (even low count), and pesticides is a killer combination. Non-conclusion: Feed syrup + pollen substitute + fondant board, use IPM methods with tolerant bees, and keep your breeder yard stationary and as far as possible from the crops. Also ant-proof your colonies as they eat the mites out of your SBB, falsely reducing your counts.
 
#28 ·
Intresting Kilocharlie!
Beltsville did not want a thing to do with my samples & they told me to contact a USDA lab in South Carolina.
I asked if they wanted any of the samples in alcohol and was told " no "
I asked if this would harm the samples as the alcohol would taint the samples & was told " yes "
The few dead bees we could find out of the hundreds of dead outs were kept on ice & sent overnite to the lab in a cooler.
I have yet to find anyone that has sent samples in this year that have turned up with anything in there samples that caused there losses.
 
#103 ·
papar;904067 Mike- I used the MQS for mid-Jan said:
I know it took awhile but finally could check the hives we treated with MAQS.
The yard had 20 hives, the 10 treated with MAQS lost 50%, the 10 treated with Apiguard are all alive and doing very good.
so bob's hives 71 lost 12 about a 17% loss, exclude the MAQ hives 61 lost 7 around 10% loss.
I can't get into some of my yards yet but checked 76 lost 1 starved, all Apiguard
now I owe bob 5 hives as it was my idea to try the MAQS on his hives?
we also checked Pete's hives but I don't know the #'s so you might want to check with him.
 
#31 ·
They are using the same neonics they've been using for the last decade or so. The new thing, though, is the fungicides that are getting popular. Bee bread needs fungus to ferment so the bees can digest it to raise long lived bees for winter. I think fungicides are a more likely culprit.
 
#33 ·
I lost almost 50% of my hives. I thought I would lose a lot more as many were only 1 frame strong. I took them to the Almond fields anyway along with the hives I rented out and it seems that helped. I went out and checked them today and they've all grown to about nuc size.

The worse I've seen is a beekeeper nearby that had 90 hives and now only 8, in rather poor condition (not acceptable for Almond pollination).
 
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