Honey Run Apiaries-A Beekeeper’s Blog

As I wrote the previous post I know losses were high.  But until I got into the rest of the yards, I didn’t know how high. At home they weren’t too bad, but some of the out yards got hit hard.  It’s nothing like anything I’ve seen before. Everyone I’ve talked to in the state are seeing losses of 50-80%, and unfortunately mine are no different.  I got a good chance to look at the hives this week in the warm spell and many of the remaining hives are week.  I expect to loose a few more before spring really hits, but most of the remaining should survive, but won’t be ready to split for nucs come April.  The only good thing is that most of my breeding stock (Instrumentally Inseminated queens) made it.

I’ve spent the past few days trying to decide how to proceed from here.  After long consideration and several sleepless nights, I’ve decided to scale back the queen rearing significantly this year to rebuild and concentrate on the breeding stock.  I simply don’t have the bees for mating nucs and financially bringing in outside hives just isn’t an option.  It’s depression and I just want to go outside and scream, but I’ve got to deal with the hand I have.

Some Observations:

I haven’t spent much time looking at the dead outs yet as I’ve been concentrating on the live ones.   I can’t say if it’s this CCD that is all over the news.  Only one hive ‘dissapeared’ as described, and that was back in October.  There were also only a few that outright starved (we had a very poor honey year and I ended up doing a lot of feeding in the fall).  Most so far seem to have smaller than normal clusters and appear to have starved surrounded by honey.  Possibly caught in this last cold spell we had.  I’ve talked to several people who’s hives were alive before the cold snap,  but then lost around half.  My hunch is that it is due to lack on nutrition or nutritional stress.  They seem to have little pollen and haven’t begin raising brood like they normally would.  Hives in the latter part of last year had trouble building up as well.  Some others have noticed that bees going on cleansing flights over the winter (on warmer days) didn’t seem to return.  I also saw a lot of dysentery, someting I usually don’t see in more than 1 or 2 hives at most.  All this (and more) makes me lean towards a pollen deficency as it reduces overwintering success, health, increases sensitivity to pesticides (herbicides, etc.).

Overall, my the bees at home did the best (I did open feed pollen substitute in the fall), and The II queens did well.  The 2 yards that had the larger losses last year (though it wasn’t high), were nearly decimated this year. 

Large drifts still have not yet melted, but it’s finally above freezing with temperatures near 50 for the past few days.  The latter part of last week was spent mixing up sugar syrup and feeding hives to get them moving and prevent starvation.  I also put out dry pollen substitue to keep them busy until the maples start blooming.  Later this week I’ll be adding pollen patties to the hive to really get them producing brood.

Winter losses were high.  Much of it was expected though after a very poor honey crop last year and a poor fall, resulting in hives that were light in fall.  Much of it seems to be due to starvation in spite of our fall feeding attempt, in hindsight we probably should have fed earlier, longer and more of the hives.  There also seemed to be quite a few that died of local starvation where the cluster got caught away from the honey in a cold spell.  In these cases the cluster looked smaller than expected.  Those hives that were fed in general did much better.  It will take some work to get built back up again.  On the plus side, most of the breeder queens made it.

Of course the question I am constantly asked now due to all the media coverage is ‘do your bees have CCD’ or similar question.  I really can’t answer that one.  Other than defining what some symptoms are, no one knows what it really is.  Losses are up statewide, with most everyone I’ved talked to seeing 50-80% losses (commercial and hobbiest alike).  A lot of it is being blamed on CCD, but I think it’s a bit of a ‘desease of the day’ syndrome.  I did see one hive in October that looks exactly like CCD, but most of the deadouts do not.  Are the small clusters that died due to a milder case of CCD?  Until someone figures out exactly what it is, I don’t know.  Apparently CCD (or something similar) has been documented in this country as early as 1915 (according to James Tew), with occurences in other countries.  But is always seemed to go away as quickly as it came, and no one figured out why then either.  Hopefully it will do the same now.

Here’s hoping for a good year….