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The frigid cold winter, lots of snow, and very low temperatures, caused the death of so many honey bees this past winter. Averaging usually around a 30% loss, this year being much greater.
We had just one hive. Once the cold weather finally broke, we went to check on it, and we found ALL dead bees! It looked like the picture below...Which is said to be how bees look when starved to death. It's sickening seeing that...My brother had caught that swarm last spring...And then in hopes for maybe some honey, and then to see that...I know so many honey bee farmers lost so great of hives this year. And being their way of putting food on the day, would make for a terrible year for them. Thankfully we only had them, to try and provide honey for ourselves, and not have to make a living from them. Hopefully we will be able to catch another swarm, or two this spring, in hopes for a much better winter!
The following article from Scientific American gives you a better idea of exactly what I'm talking about.
Dead honey bees in a colony with inadequate food reserves. (Urbana, Illinois)
Over the next few months we will hear news of this winter’s honey bee losses in North America. The news won’t be good.
Although official loss tallies have yet to be released, persistently cold weather across the northern part of the continent has made the 2013-2014 winter an unusually difficult one. Beekeepers relying on standard fall harvesting and feeding regimes are almost certainly discovering, as spring arrives, that their preparations were inadequate for at least some colonies.
Honey bees survive winter in a remarkable fashion. Rather than slowing into diapause the typical insect way, letting the body’s natural anti-freeze proteins do the work, honey bees instead maintain the center of the nest at room temperature. They create heat by metabolizing honey, and the honey furnace is powerful indeed. Hive temperature doesn’t waver even at – 40º outside. Honey is fuel, and in cold winters bees need more fuel than in warm winters. They are like us.
I mention the weather as a preemptive debunking of agenda-laden claims to come.
Recent bee declines, and especially the mysterious Colony Collapse Disorder, are often co-opted into the advocacy efforts of groups against cell phones, pesticides, and any number of other issues. While these organizations are well-intentioned, their efforts have tended to overstep the scientific research on Colony Collapse. The best studies point somewhere between inconclusive and a complex blend of various factors. If this season’s losses are high, we will likely be hearing more of the loosely-tethered campaigning. Be appropriately skeptical that anything other than weather (and, if you like, climate change) is behind the latest bee-pocalypse.
Colony Collapse, whatever the cause, is marked by a lack of adult bees in the hive in early spring. It’s as though the worker force flew off and never returned, leaving behind a queen, some young bees, and otherwise healthy-looking brood.
Regular winter loss, on the other hand, ends with adult bees inside the hive, tragically face-down in the cells as they ate through the final honey stores:
Colonies that perish from starvation are found with many workers face-down in empty honey cells, having eaten the last of the stores.
Here is the bee winter loss survey from Project Apis M. over the last few winters. Unfortunately, the 2013/2014 loss is not yet announced...Some farmers saying they ended up with a 40% loss, while others close to 70%. Wow! Imagine that much of a loss!?
Bee Winter Loss Survey
July 18, 2013 by
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