What I have feared happened. I have lost my first colony. It is weird because it isn't like loosing a pet. They are just insects after all. But they are my insects that I have put a ton of time and effort into. Worse yet, I might have been able to prevent it. I did a quick look and most of the frames are totally empty. There are a few spots of honey but nothing substantial. The weird thing is that there aren't a bunch of bees with their heads in the comb, as I have heard it would be with starvation, and there was a bunch of bee candy they didn't touch. I didn't take the hive totally apart because I want to see if a more advanced beekeeper will go through it with me. I want to do this because if it was starvation I can reuse this comb. If not, what was it? And is it safe to use the comb? It would certainly help the next colony if they didn't have to start building comb from scratch but I don't want to put another colony on this comb just to have them die out from some disease.
I'm not real happy about Hive 2 either. They are still alive and there is enough heat coming off of them so I know the queen is laying but the cluster is pretty small. There might not be enough bees to keep the brood warm. It would help if it warmed up around here but that isn't supposed to happen at least this week. All I can do know is feed and hope the warm weather comes quickly.
So there are some things to learn from this for me and for you. Location is important. Very important. My property is off the beaten path, which is good for a lot of things (nobody messing with my hives, reduced threat of pesticides, lots of wildflowers) but when we get record snows it is not so good. I couldn't get back to them for the last couple of weeks. If I had maybe Hive 1 would still be alive.
The bigger thing is to watch the honey stores closer. Going back to last fall I was suspect that the honey store was low. If this had been a mild winter maybe that would have been ok. As one of the coldest and the snowiest winters we have ever had they needed even more than usual to get through. So now I am going to go every weekend until our nectar flow starts and hope to get Hive 2 through March.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Winter Check
44 degrees, sunny, 5 inches of snow on the ground. No pictures this time since I was alone and working as quickly as possible. This entry is posted late. The visit was on Feb. 4th. The next day we left to Florida for a week vacation. Thank goodness! The snow came and came and came. We had to dig out of if today when we got back but the vacation was fun and watching the last nighttime space shuttle launch was amazing!
Normally I wouldn't have gone out and disturbed my girls but at the last beekeeper meeting I had talked with my mentor about my bees and she was concerned that they were already at the top of the hive. The theory being that they have eaten their way through the honey in the middle hive body and have now eaten their way through the center of the top hive body. You aren't supposed to disturb the cluster in the winter so it is impossible to see what is going on in the frames they are clustered around. My mentor recommended making some 1:1 sugar syrup to feed to them in case the honey was all gone. So I worried about them for a week and a half until I could get back out to them.
One word of advice - in the class they recommended picking a location for the hives that you could get to in all kinds of weather. Because of the topography of my land the options were limited but I thought, "Ah, this spot is pretty good. I can get here except when there is a ton of snow or it has been raining a lot." And guess what happened this winter in the Washington D.C. area? Uh huh, record snows.
So here I am trudging through 5 inches of snow with my bee bucket, my bee suit (bees apparently don't like the cold, more on that later), two hive bodies, two bottles of sugar syrup, and some bee candy. Maybe I need a second bucket to carry this other stuff. I get to the hives and there is very little activity. In fact, I first thought I might have a dead colony, but when I got closer I could see a handful of bees flying around. Still alive! I started with hive 2 this time. I typically move all my stuff in position and then put the bee suite on. As I am moving all my gear from under a pine tree, where there was no snow, to inside the electric fence I noticed more and more bees flying around. It seemed odd because there were only a few bees flying around when I got there and now they all seem to be attracted to me, and more of them. Once everything is staged I crack open the outer cover. I could see the cluster through the hole in the inner cover and could see there were quite a lot of bees. Another good sign. Then I took off the inner cover. Oh boy they didn't care for that one bit! Now bees are everywhere, landing on me and flying everywhere. I had been working without gloves the last couple of times and so I didn't have any on this time either. Naturally I get stung the first 20 seconds I have the inner cover off. The way they were behaving this particular trip I quickly decided to put gloves on. I might have to think about some other feeders for the winter so I can skip disturbing them so much.
I needed to see how much honey was left. Before I started I did the "heft test" and it seemed like the hives were still fairly heavy so I figured there was some honey. The cluster was on one side of the hive so I could pull a couple frames on the other side to check. Yep, honey. That's good. They hadn't touched the bee candy I put in last time and, in fact, they weren't even crawling on it. I put a full frame back against the cluster. The one I had taken out was empty on the side that was facing the cluster so I put the empty side against the hive body. My worries have been alleviated at least for the time being. Once the queen picks up her laying it may take some effort to keep them well fed.
Normally I wouldn't have gone out and disturbed my girls but at the last beekeeper meeting I had talked with my mentor about my bees and she was concerned that they were already at the top of the hive. The theory being that they have eaten their way through the honey in the middle hive body and have now eaten their way through the center of the top hive body. You aren't supposed to disturb the cluster in the winter so it is impossible to see what is going on in the frames they are clustered around. My mentor recommended making some 1:1 sugar syrup to feed to them in case the honey was all gone. So I worried about them for a week and a half until I could get back out to them.
One word of advice - in the class they recommended picking a location for the hives that you could get to in all kinds of weather. Because of the topography of my land the options were limited but I thought, "Ah, this spot is pretty good. I can get here except when there is a ton of snow or it has been raining a lot." And guess what happened this winter in the Washington D.C. area? Uh huh, record snows.
So here I am trudging through 5 inches of snow with my bee bucket, my bee suit (bees apparently don't like the cold, more on that later), two hive bodies, two bottles of sugar syrup, and some bee candy. Maybe I need a second bucket to carry this other stuff. I get to the hives and there is very little activity. In fact, I first thought I might have a dead colony, but when I got closer I could see a handful of bees flying around. Still alive! I started with hive 2 this time. I typically move all my stuff in position and then put the bee suite on. As I am moving all my gear from under a pine tree, where there was no snow, to inside the electric fence I noticed more and more bees flying around. It seemed odd because there were only a few bees flying around when I got there and now they all seem to be attracted to me, and more of them. Once everything is staged I crack open the outer cover. I could see the cluster through the hole in the inner cover and could see there were quite a lot of bees. Another good sign. Then I took off the inner cover. Oh boy they didn't care for that one bit! Now bees are everywhere, landing on me and flying everywhere. I had been working without gloves the last couple of times and so I didn't have any on this time either. Naturally I get stung the first 20 seconds I have the inner cover off. The way they were behaving this particular trip I quickly decided to put gloves on. I might have to think about some other feeders for the winter so I can skip disturbing them so much.
I needed to see how much honey was left. Before I started I did the "heft test" and it seemed like the hives were still fairly heavy so I figured there was some honey. The cluster was on one side of the hive so I could pull a couple frames on the other side to check. Yep, honey. That's good. They hadn't touched the bee candy I put in last time and, in fact, they weren't even crawling on it. I put a full frame back against the cluster. The one I had taken out was empty on the side that was facing the cluster so I put the empty side against the hive body. My worries have been alleviated at least for the time being. Once the queen picks up her laying it may take some effort to keep them well fed.
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