Worst winter ever

It could have even been the eclipse..........but that is only guessing.
An educated guess is still only a guess

JEP said:

If I may quote one of your earlier posts from a few years ago:-

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I had also been looking at the same, hence my questions, maybe why this info is lacking.

ian wallace said:

I live in wiltshire (burbage)
for the treatment i used iceing sugger, as i dont like the idea of using chemicals in the hive,

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ian wallace said:

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

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If flowering in Sept and Oct it was mustard. The honey produced crystalize quickly and the bee need water to process it.

ian wallace said:

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

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A date for catching the swarms or the purchase of the bought in hives would be a great help. Also did you carry out any treatment of the swarm prior to brood being laid? Any other treatments between last summer and now?

When do you feed?

I know a couple of guys who fed in early September and suffered with very late swarms and heavy losses due to the warm autumn weather.
Too late for virgins to get mated. Demoralised bees going into winter is far from ideal.

From my perspective this winter has been one of the better ones in terms of colony losses. I wintered 29 and only lost one (it superceded in september and the new queen never got mated. The rest of the colonies seem in good heart with plenty of both stores and bees left in them. If a beekeeper lost a high % of colonies over this last winter then there must a serious underlying cause. Varroa or Nosema are usually the most likely causes of losses along with drone layers.

masterBK said:

From my perspective this winter has been one of the better ones in terms of colony losses. I wintered 29 and only lost one (it superceded in september and the new queen never got mated. The rest of the colonies seem in good heart with plenty of both stores and bees left in them. If a beekeeper lost a high % of colonies over this last winter then there must a serious underlying cause. Varroa or Nosema are usually the most likely causes of losses along with drone layers.

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Me too. It looks like my best year ever (out of 6)
But I bought a vaporiser. I think it is that.

ian wallace said:

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

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You checked them before buying? Or did somebody else check them on your behalf?

A description of the frames would help. It's often quite easy to see if varroa was involved.
So first question - any dead brood or no brood at all.

What seems odd to me is that if they seemed to be Ok going into winter and well fed etc etc...one may accept that out of 18 hives that loosing 2 or three may not be too much of a disaster and is just the way that things happen without us knowing why. If these hives were all fairly close together than one may assume that a decease would/might spread fairly easily between the hives but would that be applicable when they havent been out and about? and even if it is, it seems improbable that all 18 hives have died out...
Have there been any other losses within the area?

Has somebody been spraying nearby or even sprayed the bees because they didnt like them?

Ok so you don't know my hives BUT
My bees didn't or have not died from varroa mite
I can assure you of that otherwise I would not have started this thread.

Not being to harsh as you say but I will gladly send you records of all my hives and show you mite counts before and after treatment

Enough said

I would get the monitoring boards in your remaining hives quickly now the bees are active and brooding. Monitor the drop and treat if required.

Also take some samples of dead bees and get them tested
Good luck

...

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.

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?

I would second what Pete says and send some of the dead bees for testing not only for diseases but also for residues.

ian wallace said:

and show you mite counts before and after treatment
Enough said

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Mite drops are not a good way to accurately tell varroa numbers, they can give an indication but are prone to letting you think there are few varroa (cos little drops) and then you wonder where the hell all those mites came from.
Asking people why you lost so many hives and a reluctance to discuss your varroa treatments means naturally that people will tend to think it's a varroa problem. Unless you can convince them about how you treated and when.

As an example from my own records of mite drops from a few years ago, they were averaging 7-8 per week before taking to the heather where the counts remained roughly the same, slight increase to around 10. I brought them back home and immediately the mite count shot up from around 10 per week to over 50 per day. Addition of bayvarol strips and the boards were literally pilled up with varroa. 1000's of the little buggers.
Had I not continually monitored I would have thought they were fine......
I was lucky.

.

Thymallus said:

Mite drops are not a good way to accurately tell varroa numbers,......................................
Asking people why you lost so many hives and a reluctance to discuss your varroa treatments means naturally that people will tend to think it's a varroa problem.
.

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I'm tending to go with Jep's instincts on this one - either that or emphusemia from icing sugar inhalation.

All i can see is a point blank refusal to believe it may be varroa which leads to thought of doubts at to it not being

ian wallace said:

My bees didn't or have not died from varroa mite
I can assure you of that otherwise I would not have started this thread.

Not being to harsh as you say but I will gladly send you records of all my hives and show you mite counts before and after treatment

Enough said

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If you are sure about that, then why the reticence to say what your varroa treatments have been? You have already lost 66% of your bees and the rest won't be far behind if you are wrong. You've asked us what killed your bees but being selective with information as you've already decided what didn't kill them. Varroa drop is a very poor indicator and it's more recent evidence that will give you more relevant data - such as the state of the brood on both the dead hives and the survivors.

Being new to beekeeping I am on a steep learning curve and have the assistance of a nice old gentleman who is my mentor.
However my three small colonies were full of stores going into winter on only three frames of bees in each hive. All dummied down and 1kg of fondant on top of insulation in each eke. They will struggle to survive the winter he said but they are in P4Y&6S Poly hives so give it a shot.
Just after Christmas I noticed hundreds of dead bees on the floor in front of one hive and quite a few in front of the others. I took a sample of bees for dissection to my club and they found nothing.
I did notice though that being small colonies I did not treat with oxalic acid. The weather had been cold and windy so I closed the OMF. Hey Presto! Not another dead bee for weeks afterwards.
My conclusion for what its worth:- Bees that make a nest in a hole in a tree only have that hole possibly for ventilation no OMF for a draught to blow through. I think my hives had to much ventilation which caused the deaths through a cold draughty hive.
Having spoken to my mentor since he has never used OMF floors in his sixty years of beekeeping and has never suffered big losses over winter.

masterBK said:

If a beekeeper lost a high % of colonies over this last winter then there must a serious underlying cause. Varroa or Nosema are usually the most likely causes of losses along with drone layers.

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The issue of winter losses this year seems to have a major geographic ingredient to it. Some areas report very low losses this winter. Other places reporting loss levels that are average to above average. It seems mainly down to what weather they met in August and September, and effectiveness of varroa control.

However, it is still way too early in much of the country for most of us to start crowing about low losses. In my part of the world the small ones will still be petering out for at least another month, and that is before we even get into them to see what is a drone layer or queenless.

FWIW we are expecting to have 20 to 25% losses in both types of wooden hives (Smith and Langstroth), but a lot of the survivors will need a lot of help. Three weeks of weather chaos in August after Hurricane Bertha, plus worse than we would like varroa problems, and a touch of N. ceranae, all went into a mix that put too many colonies into the winter with not enough young bees, and in some cases those young bees had been affected by varroa.

Some apiaries will be 50%, others that were further away from the adverse weather in August will be far less. The poly apiaries have losses that are negligible, probably 5% and most of that will be queen issues though a FEW colonies have dysentery visible too.

So.....it will be a good winter for much of the UK with some less fortunate areas.

However......if all I had used to control varroa last year (and it was a higher levels of varroa season in most parts compared to recent years) was icing sugar dustings I would be expecting to have very few colonies left in many apiaries this spring.


ps. We have plenty of those people up here too who seem to have lower losses than everyone each year, even no losses at all, for improbably long periods. Either they are far better beekeepers than we are, or they are lucky, or its all political (either on a micro or macro scale). Funny how they seem to have plenty gear around for making splits and doing swarm control the next season......................

Karsal said:

My conclusion for what its worth:- Bees that make a nest in a hole in a tree only have that hole possibly for ventilation no OMF for a draught to blow through. I think my hives had to much ventilation which caused the deaths through a cold draughty hive.
Having spoken to my mentor since he has never used OMF floors in his sixty years of beekeeping and has never suffered big losses over winter.

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I disagree, bees that may nest in trees dont often just go in through a small hole like a birds nest box , usually the tree is rotten & there are large crevices or cracks where the bees enter. The main thing with trees is the nests arent usually that close to the ground as most hives are so they probably dont get as cold.