These bees made it.
They can handle the winter, but need their honey.
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 ...
"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,"
I do remember a deep and prolonged cold Winter that killed off the gypsy moth population, knocking them back about twenty years.
Not having tent caterpillars all over the place was nice, not to mention the foliage and food crops that didn't get eaten by them.
Yup. Expect emptier store shelves and even higher food prices. And the few bees that survived the winter still have the annual colony collapse disorder to get through.
The harsh winter has even hurt bee populations in the South, but I’m not sure that CCD is as much of a problem as varroa mites or wax moths.
Looks like the beekeeper in this story was going with two deeps for all of his hives over the winter which should always leave enough honey for the bees. Up north he may want to leave an extra super on the hives over a harsh winter.
I suppose that the decision of how much honey to take/leave is a tough one, but that decision is never the less the factor for kept honey bees.
I also suppose hive placement after hibernation would be a factor. I'm not informed on beekeeping, but I wonder if the hives could not be placed inside barns or packed in straw to help insulate in the heat. I know that insulated livestock waterers take remarkably little heat to keep from freezing.
These bees made it.
They can handle the winter, but need their honey.
Thought they were supposed to ...feed ‘em pollen packs or even straight sugar.
Got it...thanks!
No bee-cams allowed?
Bees do not freeze as if they have enough food they will keep temperature inside the hive at 90 degrees. There beehives in Alaska and way up north in Canada that survive winter.
Ray Liotta is pacing the floor.
The extreme cold has positives and negatives. It has the benefit of reducing pests like the beetles that kill trees.
The ash borer beetle? Not cold enough to even slow them down.
“Indiana’s Cold Winter No Match For Emerald Ash Borer”
http://www.wfyi.org/news/articles/cold-winter-no-match-for-eab
“Expert: Ash borers likely survived frigid winter”
http://wishtv.com/2014/03/27/expert-ash-borers-likely-survived-frigid-winter/
“No bee-cams allowed?”
If you could afford to place a camera inside a dark hive and even have a light on that camera, the bees would encase the camera in propolis.
Where I live, I’m used to seeing a lot of bumblebees in the spring. This year, after the harsh winter, I’ve seen very few.
If there is a day where the temperature is above 54 F you can open the hive and take a look, but it would have to be a quick look and you would not it do drop way below freezing that night.
>Russian bee’s produce less honey but are much heartier and >can survive our periodic harsh winters.
do they ride around in little APC’s taking over neighboring hives?
Lost four hives this winter, all with full supers. That majorly sucked.
Mites, wax moths, starvation or something else?
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Not possible. The hive can't be opened unless the outside temps are 53degrees or above. Some people might have heated barns, but for most beekeepers it's not realistic.
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