# Lost both my TBH's this winter



## Life is Good! (Feb 22, 2013)

Sorry to hear of your losses. Any confirmation on why hive #2 died out? (speculation, intuition, hunches?). I'm always looking to learn more from those who've walked there before me. 

I've got one TBH I think is a loss. Haven't seen anyone coming/going since mid Jan when the weather was about 35 and other hive was flying. Our other TBH survived and is bringing in something today - LOTS of bees about on this warm sunny day. Which will be good, as temps are set to dive for another week or so.


----------



## brettj777 (Feb 27, 2013)

So I think that they froze and couldn't move to the honey. I couldn't see any other obvious signs.


----------



## Colleen O. (Jun 5, 2012)

I'm really sorry to hear about your losses but am glad you are diving right back in. The drawn comb will give your new bees a jump-start!


----------



## Silverbackotter (Feb 23, 2013)

All but one of my 4' hives died this winter. I am thinking that 4' might be to short for a northern climate. Ask me in a month when the first plants start blooming by then I might have lost my 5's too.


----------



## Jon Wolff (Apr 28, 2013)

BrettJ77 and Silverbackotter, sorry to read about your hives. I had one colony abscond in the fall, leaving brood and honey and a hive full of drawn comb. It was a mystery. My others are doing fine. One of the problems with top bar hives is winter feeding. It's natural for the bees to move up the combs to the honey bands, not around combs. It's not a problem for my bees in Georgia as we often have nice, warm days in winter for the bees to get back to the honey combs, but for y'all up north, where winter cold might last week upon week, I could see how they would eat up their stores and not have a chance to get back to where the honey is. If the honeycombs were on both sides of the winter cluster, the bees would move in one direction and eat their way into a corner with the remaining honeycomb at the other end, past the empty combs, which could be why that hive had four combs of honey and still starved to death. If you have an observation hive and can see where the cluster is, you could place empty combs on one side of the cluster and all the honeycombs on the other side so that the bees will have access to all their honey as they move through the hive. We had a very rainy spring and summer last year and the hives were very light. We also had those two polar vortex come through. I worried about starvation, but I have something I call my easy feeder, which is a bottom board with holes located all along the hive. I was able to screw in jars of syrup directly below the cluster so I don't have to open the hive in the cold. When it got really cold, I placed dry sugar in the jars.


----------

