Posted on 04/17/2014 10:38:54 AM PDT by chessplayer
HOLLAND, Mich. (WZZM) -- A local beekeeper who lost all of his honeybees this winter and he says it's happening across the state.
Anyone can look at Don Lam's beehive and see piles of dead honeybees. However, for Lam, each hive also tells the story of a struggle to survive. "They vibrate their wing muscles and that vibration is similar to shivering," says Lam, a beekeeper in Holland.
It was a fight that his nearly half a million honeybees lost to a long, harsh winter. "They had eaten there way all the way to the top, had run out of food, and they couldn't move over because it was too cold," says Lam. "In some cases they froze to death because the cluster got too small and in other cases they starved to death."
"We are losing one third of our bee population every year and then we scramble that next summer to make that population up again," says Lam. "You can imagine how much we would be concerned if we lost one third of our chickens or a third of our cows every year, and because we don't see bees in the same way we don't realize it is a crisis."
(Excerpt) Read more at wzzm13.com ...
This winter is causing a massive die off of bumble bees, too.
Somehow global warming is to blame.
and the keepers don’t check on the bees and supplement if needed through the winter??
Cause Ccording to liberals, progressives, Communists / socialists, the POTUS, the UN, and the NWO: Global warming
One third of my chickens or beef would not die of starvation because I didn’t feed them.
Cause according to liberals, progressives, Communists / socialists, the POTUS, the UN, and the NWO: Global warming
it’s difficult to check on them; they ball up in the hive. If you disrupt that through the winter you kill the hive.
He’s obviously a Global Warming denier.
No they DO NOT “Check” on them during the winter! The Bees around late Sept and into Oct seal the hives tight with “Bee Glue” called Prophalis(sp?) and if you open the hive during the winter you take a chance on killing them all.
YOu cannot check the honey holders?
Thanks! I was wondering about that too. I figured there'd have to be a reason. The article read like the Beekeeper's attitude was, 'oh well, you are on your own bees -- see you in the Spring', but I figured there had to be a reason why the Beekeeper couldn't keep his livestock from starving to death.
Well, isn't that just too snazzy? The author begins the article with something that is not even a sentence.
Is this the best jourinalist skools can offer?
This is not going to bode well for a variety of plants.
I’ve notice last year that the number of bees seemed to have dropped off quite a bit. These guys may have to build a greenhouse over the hives just to keep out the chill.
That’s what I was wondering. If he can tell the bees had eaten through all of their reserve, is there something we humans can supply to them as a temporary supplement? What about providing them with an artificial source of sugar? Some of this was inevitable, due to the severe weather.
Check for what? The honey has already been harvested from the medium supers (you don’t take honey from the brood supers; that is their food across the winter).
and the keepers don’t check on the bees and supplement if needed through the winter??
These are bee experts. If it was that easy they would have done it.
My GF lost her hive this year in PA. I haven’t checked on the neighbors down the road. Most bee keepers that are in it for the honey usually keep italian bee’s but the downside is winters take a toll on that species. Russian bee’s produce less honey but are much heartier and can survive our periodic harsh winters.
The extreme cold has positives and negatives. It has the benefit of reducing pests like the beetles that kill trees.
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