# big winter losses



## standman

Tim, Sorry to hear of your losses. My hives are doing well, and if we don't have another severe cold spell, I think 8 of 9 will make it through.
How are your hives configured? Double deep or mediums? Just curious. Hope you can recover quickly.
Stan


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## Solomon Parker

Yes, seems to be fairly common lately. Perhaps we can account it to climate change. We're all having more volatile weather. I know I'm having colder snaps, quicker defrosts, deeper snows, and more/less rain in the summer.


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## canoemaker

Standman, I use ten-frame deep brood chambers, stacked two high. As I said earlier, most of the upper brood chambers are still full of honey. It makes me think the bees died early on in the winter.


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## standman

Tim, the only hive I lost was a dead-out early in the fall. It really was just a nuc that I had moved into a 10 frame, but it never took off.

In relation to your "top deep full of honey", I have some that are in the same condition even now. In fact, last Sunday I went through half my hives, intending to rotate the boxes. My expectation was that they would be in the top deep, and the honey would be in the bottom. But lo and behold, a couple of the hives had practically no bees in the top, and the top box was full of honey! So I left those hives as they were. If they stay in this condition, I plan to either extract some of those top frames, or expand my brood chamber by interspacing with foundation/drawn comb. Are you planning to extract, or going to use your resources to get some nucs/swarms off to a quick start?


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## AmericasBeekeeper

Welcome Tim!


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## papamoose

I am in Goochland, VA and I lost 2 of my 4 this winter. 1 was early and I could not find the queen, and the second was 2 weeks ago, and they were clustered around a new queen cell with a 1/2 formed queen.


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## scdw43

Honey is important but ventilation in winter is important also. If the bees get wet, and stuck ,they can starve. The top brood chamber needs to be vented. I use 1/2" hardware cloth for bottom entrances, open SBB and a hole in the rim of my inner cover, you can throw a cat through. 

http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h10/dave_sc/nucs/100_1528.jpg

You can also send in a sample of the bees, it's free.

http://ars.usda.gov/Services/docs.htm?docid=7472

Sorry for your lose.


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## willrich68

Sorry about the losses. 5 hives in and 5 hives out and picking up speed here in North central Alabama.
William
All About Bees


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## hipbee

I lost 7 out of 10....well two were nucs I didnt really expect to survive.....its funny though one of the survivors was the weakest full size hive I had going into the winter.
the good news is that two of the survivors already have a whole box full of brood and another box of bees to boot.

the die outs all had honey left over.....I think they just didnt have a big enuf cluster to generate enuf heat to move up......all of them were first year hives either started from packages or splits from packages. next year i am going to combine more of my weaker ones.


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## canoemaker

I plan to use the frames of honey to rebuild my colonies. I will have four 3-lb packages arriving in early April, also I'm getting six new queens (NWC) at the end of April. A couple local beekeepers have offered to give me several frames of brood to bolster my packages and make nucs for the new queens. I've got lots of drawn comb and plenty of honey to help them all get started. If I don't have enough brood to make nucs with all the new queens, I plan to kill a couple of the queens from the packages (Italian) and replace them with the NWC queens.


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## canoemaker

scdw43 said:


> Honey is important but ventilation in winter is important also. If the bees get wet, and stuck ,they can starve.


We had a period of heavy snow/ice. Their entrances were blocked for a few days. That may have caused their death. I should have been more diligent about clearing their entrances.
Thanks for the tip about where to send bees for examination.


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## Solomon Parker

Maybe loose equipment helps with ventilation when entrances are blocked? What do you think?


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## Omie

If you keep a small upper entrance as well as the lower one, the bees will always be able to come and go despite corpses blocking the lower entrance.


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## canoemaker

Omie said:


> If you keep a small upper entrance as well as the lower one, the bees will always be able to come and go despite corpses blocking the lower entrance.


That certainly makes sense, as it would also provide the much needed ventilation. But it also brings up another issue. Do the bees provide guards at both entrances when it's warm enough for them to break out of their cluster? If not, what is there to keep pests such as wax moths from coming in the upper entrance unimpeded? If the bees are mainly in the lower chamber, it seems like the moths could have free reign in the upper chamber. They could really make a mess.


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## ChristopherA

I also live in the big ole VA...

Had 14 going in, and as of last week 14 coming out.

I run 1 deep and 1 medium going into winter. I also add sugar to the top bars first of the year to help suppliment the hives. All seemed pretty strong.

I also run 3 entrances through out the year on my established hives. Lower entrance is has standard reducer/mouse guard, middle of the deep I have 3/4 inch to 1 inch holes and I made a top entrance that sits under the cover that is 1/2 inch wide in a shim.

Welcome to the beesource club and being a Virginian if you need any help just hollar


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## tct1w

If I had to bet,other than disease,I would have to think they starved. I had one of my hives last year that was in the process of starving. Keeping a little brood warm and they didnt move to frames with honey. It was cold. Just a guess. I moved honey to either side,scratched it with my hive tool and they did fine. Was real lucky I saw it. Almost didnt check that hive on that day. If they are head first in the comb,they starved. Hope this helps. By the way,love your area in VA. Take care Peace Dave


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## BGhoney

The Bees will guard all the entrances they can, as long as there not to big. If you install loose equipment they will fill the cracks with propolis, unless installed after its to cold to make it.

Its going to be 15 degrees here tonight, we don't have to worry about wax moths flying for 3-4 more months.

Good luck on building back up your numbers


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## Mtn. Bee

Welcome Tim!
I run upper entrance holes on my hives and prop up the migratory cover with a shim for the winter season.
Don't worry about them not guarding the upper entrances because usually they have a pile of guard bees by each one.
I believe and have read that the upper holes also help them fill the honey supers faster. I do put a piece of duct tape over it once the super is full to prevent robbing and to let those guard bees move to my newly place empty super upper entrance hole.
The bees also plug up the holes with propolis in the fall and I have to dig the propolis back out for winter otherwise there goes the vent/entrance hole.
Best of luck getting the operation back up and running! :thumbsup:


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## Mac Harper

Here in central Connecticut, snow came down in December, and kept coming every few days. Still a foot deep in March. Had to use snowshoes to dig out entrances during one warm day. Weather has been cold and windy, too. I've lost several hives due to starvation, poor honey layout. One hive cluster was surrounded by honey only an inch away, with honey above and below. Now I'm grinding up bee abdomens from several hives, including survivors, looking for nosema spores.
Very few spores so far, but still looking for disease. Maybe they didn't have long underwear this year.

Mac


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## canoemaker

Mac Harper said:


> I've lost several hives due to starvation, poor honey layout. One hive cluster was surrounded by honey only an inch away, with honey above and below. Mac


Mac, I'm sorry for your losses. As I cleaned up my dead hives, I found mites on the bottom boards of eight of them. I'm sure they contributed to their demise. It's the first time I've had any experience with mites, and I've been keeping bees since 1977. I guess I've been lucky up until now. After cleaning all my equipment, I ended up with over 1,000 lbs. of honey in brood frames. I'm well stocked for rebuilding this spring. I've also spent some time making 5-frame plywood nuc boxes based on Coates' plans. They are quick and easy, and I used scrap plywood on hand so cost was nil. Maples and pussy willows just getting ready to bloom here.
Tim


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## TripleH

Hi,
Sorry to hear of all the bee losses and I can empathize. As a new beek (April, 2010) I lost my only 2 hives about 6 weeks ago. They had plenty of stores and good ventilation. Running all 8-frame mediums. I had been using an IPM board to check for mites through Nov.

I'm in Falls Church, VA (DC suburb <- please don't hold that against me !!). In order to determine the cause of death I called the USDA lab in Beltsville, MD where they will analyze your bees for free. Click through this link -> http://www.ars.usda.gov/Services/docs.htm?docid=7473 it tells you what to do to ship samples to them for testing. Since it's only about 20 miles from me I drove there and they actually let me participate in the testing of my bees. It was really cool and interesting !!! The determination was the the major contributing factor for my bee losses was varroa destructor mites.

I just received my March 2011 _Bee Culture_ magazine and there are some articles/research on varroa destructor.

Not to be outdone by some stupid mites I have 4 nucs on order and plan to try to make 2 splits after a bit. I can use the honey/pollen stores from my dead outs to feed the new colonies. 

Best of luck to everybody for successful beekeeping!

Tim


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