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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.
 
#71 ·
As I re-read back through the posts, Dsemple post #24, Michael Bush's post #31, and Camero7's post #32 seem to be on to the "failed queen" thing - a lack of pollen made them all quit rearing brood. That's not queen failure, not unfertilizer, and I suspect that MB is close - the fungicides are a contributing factor to the pollen's suitability (or lack of it). They're protein starved, pollen or no pollen, if they've been contaminated with fungicides, so the colonies contracted going into winter. Colony strength should be the answer in this situation. Undetected, it could have lead to many of the dead-outs with few bees in the boxes.

If this is so, David LaFerney and Keith Jarrett are likely very close - we either didn't notice and/or failed to adapt. The signal was the weather pattern change.

Drought is no longer drought - it is now combined stress, with all the other factors such as Ian mentions. Mites tend to be tied in - someone mentioned the mites came on strong with an early spring. Viruses are related to mites. Pesticides tend to greatly exacerbate mite and virus sensitivity.

I think I should consider dropping pollination altogether and focus on organic honey as far from farms as I can.
 
#73 ·
It should tend to reduce exposure to ag chemicals, some of which are suspected by many to be an exacerbating factor in viruses that didn't show up very often before the arrival of the mites and show up a lot more often now.

It should reduce exposure to mites, and probably other bee diseases in heavily mobile-bee-pollinated areas if your bees don't show these maladies presently.

Environmental stresses are sometimes VERY local, sometimes not.
 
#74 ·
So in places like Hawaii, where these fields of corn do not exist and agriculture is limited,
are they seeing healthier bees and are the beekeepers coping with better survivals ?

A place like Hawaii would tend to have a reduced exposure to ag chemicals, so that exacerbating factor would not be a factor and the bees would better handle virus and mites, right?
 
#78 ·
Keith - Just to be sure...

weight on the hives - Weight = good
are they nice tight boxes with little exposed holes & cracks - tight = good
is the sub feed on top - top = good
sub in the middle boxes = better
are the lids & frames scracted for a tight seals - ??
if inside feeders have they been reversed - ??
if they are inside feeders look if they used corn syrup - Corn syrup = Bad?
are the bees near the feed - good
or are they on one side of the box - bad?
is there much "dry comb" - bad?

I know you are naming some best practices, but I'm not entirely sure which.
 
#79 ·
Keith - Just to be sure...

are the lids & frames scracted for a tight seals - ??
if inside feeders have they been reversed - ??
if they are inside feeders look if they used corn syrup - Corn syrup = Bad?
or are they on one side of the box - bad?
is there much "dry comb" - bad?

I know you are naming some best practices, but I'm not entirely sure which.
These are also my questions. Keith please expand if you would.
 
#82 ·
i started keeping bees 30 some years ago, back then almost all of my dead hives were from starvation in the winter and i knew it was my fault, with all of the problems today i cant even tell if its my fault, we rarely ever had to feed, and giving them pollen sub i didnt even know was available, and back then i was young and would pull two deeps of honey per hive, and we rented to orchards (lot of small orchards back then) and still didnt have any problems like we have now.
this year i had 2 hives that all of the bees were gone, they went into winter good, still honey in the hive, i have never seen this before, its all getting very strange.
sometimes i dont think it matters how you keep them, just like the farmer who grows his own watermelon he plants double so if the cold kills the first batch hes got another batch ready, and it seems to be the same with bees, go into winter with double what you want to come out with, seems like a waste but it seems to be the way it works
 
#88 ·
I lost better than 50% so far. out of 30-35 hives lost most had stores. survivors appear to have enough to get through the next few weeks but I gave them more to be sure.
I caught 13 swarms last year & they seemed to be strong & well supplied. Only two made it through the winter. here in NY seemed to be a long winter & not looking like it's gonna be over anytime soon.
Most of my overwintered nucs in 5 frame equipment seem to be in good shape lost maybe 4 of18

Hope to get a response on a new thead about rebuilding numbers.
 
#89 ·
Lakebilly, sorry to hear of your loss but it seems to be more of the norm now a days than not.
I sure hope you have not fallen old & forgetful as many of us beeks have in the past year or so & no longer remember how to keep our bees alive.
Worse yet I hope you have not fallen into my class of lazy beekeepers that just think my bees should take car of themselves.
I am thinking of purchasing those advertised t-shirts that read on the front " I Used To Care " & then doing some custom work to them.
PM me if you are intrested!
 
#91 ·
soupcan,

I take a very serious approach to a very large investment that I made to this venture. I am on this forum to educate myself to that end. I appreciate your note. I would invite anyone to work w/me @ my remodeling bizz, my farm, or my beez (that I work 95% of the time by myself) & then wonder if I ever take the lazy approach. Not reading too much into your note, just saying.
 
#92 ·
Sorry Ian, did not mean to offend you!
My point is simple & that is how did this " chemical thing " get to this point???
All I hear is " no testing required " as to the effects on bees!
Yet here in the USA it can take 5, 7 & maybe 10 years of testing and proof that a new drug is safe for use on or in humans.
Animal vet medications can take almost as long.
Think about this, next time you hear of some one using a fungicide ask them as to what percent of there application was on " control acres "
 
#94 ·
What am I going to do???
Simple, the co-ops we do business with & the farmers that we have bees on I ask them ( very politely )
if they use fungicide? And when they answer yes I ask why & as to where the test acres are at to prove that there input $$$$ are a wise investment. Most reply that the ag people recomend it & after a minute or two they all seem to come to the same conclusion that they may be throwing money to the wind.
That said for the most part almost all of these farmers do infact worry about the bees & don't want to harm them in any way.
My main concern is what we will have for problems 5 to 10 years down the road from all the junk that we are using to plant a crop today.
My wife & I grew up in a river valley that has one of the highest rates of cancers in the state.
My dad passed a number of years ago from a cancer that is so rare it really is only found in Afrcia.
The questions they asked is if dad served there or was near there in WW-II.
Ian I not a tree hugger by any means but I am really scared that this chemical deal is already over the top so to speak.
Most of the beeks on here have done this deal for long enough now to tell when the bees are a hurting & things are just not right in the hive.
The bees are a hurting and Ian if your not having any problems, man good luck to ya brother as I am afraid your a going to need it in the long run!
The scramble is on for package bees & queens not to mention singles & nucs.
And the losses are just not just from bad beekeeping.
They phone is also a ringing for a small lots of honey, every one seems scared!
 
#99 ·
I'm a new beek here....and read this thread....thanks to all for your input, knowledge, insight, etc. I had a great strong hive going into the winter, but in the last month lost it to ????? No signs of mites, disease, anything, except for the lack of pollen/protein which we seemed to be short of this fall. Folks in my area reported the same thing in regards to huge % of hive losses, and part of our county is big agriculturally speaking. Where I live, though, it was cold, cold, cold for way too long.
Thanks again to all...

Susan
 
#104 ·
My hive went into the winter with gobs of bees (carniolans), two year-old queen, two deeps: 1 brood, 1 honey; and one western super: all honey.
I insulated it with foamboard with a vent in the rear top of the hive. About 3-4 times this winter I had to wipe out the bottom of the hive of dead bees.
Each time I wiped out about two cups of bees. On good days the bees would come out and fly around. At the end of January, I put bee candy on the
inner cover because I feared they might be getting hungary, and there were lots of bees coming up throught the inner cover's hole and out the vent.
But a month ago things started to slow down. Three weeks ago the weather was really nice here, so I popped the top and took a look see..... and
there were hardly any bees left....about a hundred plus the queen-all walking around. Some of the bee candy was gone, but 99% of the honey in the western was still there, most in the second super was still there, and bottom super was plugged with dead bees.

I took off the bottom super so I could clean it out and left the other too on. Ten days later all was quiet. I popped the top again and found the rest of them dead with the queen-in a small cluster. :eek: Not terribly surprised, though. It looked liked starvation...bee bottoms sticking out of cells. Weeks before I had scored several of the frames with honey so as to help them get to it. No signs of mites (had treated hive in the fall), but possibly
dysentery...because we had several long cold spells 0 - 20 degrees for 2-3 weeks with 2 ft. of snow. No mite poop on frames, no beetles, no moths.
Now...no bees. Tracheal mites? May be.

It gets pretty cold here....late spring, early fall, long cold wet/dry winters.
 
#105 ·
sorry to hear about that susan. sounds like more of a dwindle than a sudden collapse. mite treatmeants aren't 100% effective, and nosema ceranae doesn't always show dysentery. there's been a lot of talk about viruses lately.

was all of that real honey or syrup honey?

sounds like you did everything right, have you thought about having the dead bees analyzed?
 
#106 ·
I forgot to mention that it seems the queen was failing in the end....in the western super I discovered evidence of laying workers...about 20 or so cells with two eggs in them. I don't know if that happened before or after the queen died.
The western super has 6 full frames of capped honey. :) which I think is still good and I'll keep. The second deep had two partial frames of capped honey but mostly syrup and empty cells. The brood box was mostly empty with a little syrup, some of the corners had capped honey. There was very little if any pollen cells in the hive. I've ordered a new package of bees and I think I'm going to purge most of the foundation/frames and start over with new. I know it is a crap shoot either way....new bees and possibly disease coming with them, or my hives being diseased and infecting the new bees. So starting on an equal playing field seems the best thing right now. I'll have to analyze my frames/foundation this week to see which ones to keep and which to pitch. I did save some of the last of the dead bees. I don't know yet if I'll have them analyzed.

What is really odd, yesterday the wild mongrel bees showed up and tried to rob my dead hive. They usually don't show up until June around here. But somehow they survived this weird winter. Go figure. The mosquitoes :( and hummingbirds appeared too, all on the same day.....
 
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