[Splorndle]

So, my spring was going gang buster. 2 STRONG hives and 3 packages installed on 4/5/14 Everything was great. The last two days have seen freezing temps in NC. I go to find 2 package hives frozen to death. Dead queens, dead larva and dead workers. One of the strong hives has so many dead bees and larva in the doorstep that I cannot believe there are more than 1000 bees in there.

Another year and mother nature finds a new way to kill my bees.

Dang it.

 

[jonathan]

Bees should not freeze to death unless you are talking about a colony with just a few hundred bees. A colony with several thousand bees should not freeze over a couple of cold nights. What was the minimum temperature?

 

[Splorndle]

29 and 30

 

[Santa Caras]

Awww man. Thats terrible! Had you done anything DURING the winter that helped them into this spring? (quilt boxes, tarpaper wrappings and various other methods.) that you took off? Just wondering. Know it doesnt help now after the fact but feeling your pain!
I'm a first year BK and I went out last night around 10PM. I opened up the top hive feeder and looked in the box and there musta been 300 carpenter ants in the hive going to town on the sugar water. I spent a half hour out there killing ants and sweeping them outa the box. Even though I had the legs in oil.....a blade of grass and crossed over onto the stand and they used that for a bridge to climb. Grrrrrrrrr! did a quick grass edging by hands and will use Roundup this weekend. I'm thinking its almost like a cattle rancher watching for wolves, bears, and blizzards!!
Again....sorry about your hives!!!

 

[jmgi]

Something isn't adding up here to me, like jonathan above said, package bees don't just die from a couple nights around freezing. How were you feeding them? Did you have an entrance reducer on the hives? All the bees are dead in two package hives? The strong hive you talked about, was that also a package hive or an overwintered hive?

 

[mathesonequip]

30 degrees is not very cold for bees that have food. something else is going on.

 

[jonathan]

suffocation or poisoning could be possible causes of a sudden loss.

 

[deknow]

How were you feeding the packages? Were the dead bees wet?

 

[poppy1]

Something is not adding up here, we have had 2 straight nights of 28 here in the Brushy Mtn. area of NC and all hives even nucs are doing just fine, sorry to hear this but something else is wrong here

 

[drlonzo]

Something is very strange there. I hived 10 packages of bees on 4/6/14 and have had temps in low teens here where i live in WV. ALL ten hives still going crazy with just a few dead on the landing board that didn't get inside. Otherwise they are still very much alive. Sounds as if there was no food or a poison problem. Was the boxes you used stored near chemicals or possibly cleaned with something prior to installing the bees?

 

[Michael Bush]

A package in the cold that is dying is usually because it's too cold to take syrup and they have no stores. You either have to warm the syrup or give them some kind of candy or sugar up against the cluster.

 

[FlowerPlanter]

Bees should not freeze to death unless you are talking about a colony with just a few hundred bees. A colony with several thousand bees should not freeze over a couple of cold nights. What was the minimum temperature?

I had clusters of bees the size of a baseball survive the teens.

>29 and 30
I've seen bees do cleansing flights at those temps (when it was sunny)


My guess is they starved.