Down to one of four
Jeff Steinhauer
Hope everyone else is doing okay.
Cheers,
Jeff S.
Greg V
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Jeff Steinhauer
The Langs is looking good. Cracked that open, and they had two full frames of brood, six frames of bees in the middle of the day and the queen looked amazing. They were pulling in white and yellow pollen.
Cheers,
Jeff S.
Greg V
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Paul Zelenski
Yes, it depends how you decided they were alive a couple weeks ago.
Often people will see some bees flying on the first warm days and think they hive is alive, and I suppose they are. But often there is just a tiny remnant cluster that really has no hope of surviving. The hive looks alive, but in reality is already dead; they just don’t know it yet. This type of situation is often misleading and heartbreaking.
When I checked my hives a couple weeks ago, I had one like that. Bees coming and going, but a cluster that only had 1 seam of bees. I looked and there was a queen and the tiniest patch of brood. I knew this hive wasn’t going to make it without intervention. When I went back this week, they tennis ball sized cluster was ‘frozen’ in place.
Obviously we all want as many hives as possible to make it through winter, but I’ve recently realized saving these hives isn’t worth the trouble. I started to ask what’s the benefit of putting in effort to keep them alive. Obviously there is a reason they were that weak to begin with. If I can’t identify something I did to result in such a weak hive, they are not the kind of genetics I want to propagate. Also, any efforts and resources you use to save them comes from somewhere else, and if you’re stealing from a strong hive to do it, you’re probably better off leaving the resources for the strong hive and splitting it later on.
Sorry to hear about the lost hive, but it sounds like they were probably already dwindling earlier and didn’t have the critical mass to turn the corner and start building up now that spring is here. Winter bees weakened by mites would be the leading cause, but Nosema or other disease could also be the problem. It’s also possible that there was nothing wrong and it was just too small a hive in the fall to have the strength needed to make it all the way through until spring.
I also have been removing my dry sugar and adding checkerboarded boxes to my overwintered hives. Be careful, though, it is very likely we’ll see another cold snap and this is the time of year that bees can go through stores surprisingly fast. This nice weather is a great time to ensure your bees have plenty to eat; it’s likely still another month before any reasonable nectar source, although pollen should be quite available.
From: Greg V
Sent: Sunday, April 4, 2021 1:10 PM
To: mad...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [madbees] Down to one of four
Pretty much that cluster dwindled below the critical mass over the course of the winter and in February they were barely alive.
After which they pretty much were not able to warm themselves up.
After which they were pretty much immobile and the cluster remnants froze wherever they were stuck.
A healthy cluster, to compare, always makes good use of the hard feed placed above them.
Yesterday I finally pulled the hard feed leftovers from one of my surviving units as no longer useful.
They almost finished one "pancake" and started on the second one, but the winter finally gave away.
On Sun, Apr 4, 2021 at 10:17 AM Jeff Steinhauer <jsteinh...@gmail.com> wrote:
Yes, and they were a couple frames away from honey. They barely touched the fondant. I didn't treat last year. So spent some time cleaning the hive, and prepping it for later this summer. Hopefully I can get a couple splits or a swarm.
The Langs is looking good. Cracked that open, and they had two full frames of brood, six frames of bees in the middle of the day and the queen looked amazing. They were pulling in white and yellow pollen.
Cheers,
Jeff S.--
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