Worst winter ever

Hi guys can anyone help
I've had the worst winter ever
I had 18 hives in total

Six on one site
One on another site
And eleven on another

Before the winter I feed all my bees thick sugar feed and
When I took of all the feed for winter all my hives were full of bees

in the new year my friend and I put two tubs of fondant on each hive and again
All the hives had bees

A few weeks later I looked at the bees to see if they needed any more
And found some signs of bees in some and not in others

Two weeks later I checked again and found the same and not much fondant being eaton

Yesterday I looked at the bees and I only had two hives in the site with 11 hives
3 hives in the site with 6 on
And the single hive was ok

I found that all of the hives were very heavy full of stores
Some hives had very little dead bees in them all on the frames
Some hives had a floor full of bees

This is the first year in six years that I have ever lost any bees over winter

Can anyone shine a light of what might of happen

Thank you in advance

Poorly mated queens?

You think?
Some of the hives were swans
But five hives were from Beckys bees

Two of my 8 colonies are similar. Copious dead bees on the OMF. One colony is dead, the other still alive - but I haven't opened up yet to assess further. When I saw warning signs Dec/Jan I tested for Nosema - high count in both colonies despite thymolated syrup in September (and oxalic at new year). Strangely(?) none of my colonies swarmed last year but many superseded late in the season so I suspect poorly mated Qs may be part of the answer.

Did you check for isolation starvation. What sort of hives were they in , were they single brood chambers or had you nadired for winter.

All my hives are national hives with brood and a half
Apart from one Wbc (still with bees) still with brood and half

Sorry to hear about your bees my guess would be varroa build up over a few years due to perhaps inadequate control. Not that it will make you feel any better but most of us who have been in the beekeeping game for a lot of years have had at least one winter of really bad losses. In my case I think it came about 15 years ago. That was the point when it became obvious to me that a single autumn treatment with the likes of Apistan was no longer sufficiently effective to provide adequate varroa control.

JEP said:

. That was the point when it became obvious to me that a single autumn treatment with the likes of Apistan was no longer sufficiently effective to provide adequate varroa control.

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With the widespread resistance of mites to apistan it's only useful as an occasional 'one hit' treatment anyway.
OP doesn't mention what varroa control was used over the last year - could be a combination of varroaosis, poorly mated queens (lot of that occurred last year) and maybe nosema. Without any more information we're stabbing in the dark

Yes, sorry it wasn't my intention to imply that the OP had been using Apistan. I was just highlighting that in my case complacency over varroa control led to high winter losses (have just looked through my records and it was actually 2003 when I experienced 60% winter losses). I have no notes on what the weather was like that winter but I doubt it was especially relevant.

jenkinsbrynmair said:

...
OP doesn't mention what varroa control was used over the last year - could be a combination of varroaosis, poorly mated queens (lot of that occurred last year) and maybe nosema. Without any more information we're stabbing in the dark

Click to expand...

Ian, have PM'd.

This was not a varroa mite problem. I have never had any problems with this
Also five of my hives I bought from Beckys bees last year in a five frame nuc and they were checked before I bought them

Do you use a QE and if so did you leave it on

What were your bees feeding on last year especially towards the latter part of the year?

What were the nosema levels?

Did you trickle oxalic acid in winter?

What mite treatments did you use and when?

What date did you do your last inspection to check for queens and a good brood pattern.

.
What about trackheal mite?

Swinton apiaries said:

Do you use a QE and if so did you leave it on

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It was removed

Karol said:

What were your bees feeding on last year especially towards the latter part of the year?

Click to expand...

I'm not sure
It was a nice yellow flower the field was full of it even turned the frames yellow but it was the same on my other site and they have been there for years

Finman said:

.
What about trackheal mite?

Click to expand...

Could not see any evidence

Not wishing to sound too harsh but I will stick with my original diagnosis of inadequate varroa control. If I may quote one of your earlier posts from a few years ago:-

"Firstly i would like to thank everyone for their help and opinions.

Because everyone bee keeps differently and there is no set rule on what is right and what is wrong, and the only one who knows best are the bees. I think is it wrong for people to say that you should never do this or never to that?

The guy who taught me beekeeping has used sugar dusting for years and we both think it is a nicer way of treating the bees then using chemicals. He has been a honey farmer for years and has over three hundred hives. He has not seen any evidence of lack of emerging brood or any other side effects. I also know a beekeeper who dusts his bees with dust from the roads and paths?

(The way I look at it is I would not like having chemicals put in my house or put all over me).

I have two hives and two nuc's on the go and the varroa count is very, very low.
All I am saying is this is what works for my bees."


I rest my case.