Deadouts at the Neighbor

[brooksbeefarm]

Went to my neighbor to check hives i had there, he was gone and when i walked back to my truck he was standing there.He ask how the hives were doing and i told him that i had lost half of them, he said WHAT!! my gosh how many did you lose, i said one He doesn't go back in the woods where i have them anymore, at one time i had 8 back there but moved 6 to another location.He either forgot or i moved them when he wasn't home. He laughed and said you had me going there for a moment.This has been a bad year for me on deadouts, but the ones left are strong and will build up fast, so i'll be making several splits and raise queens from the survivors. I think i've lost 30 out of 70 hives, several was robbed out, 7 hives i'm still trying to find the cause, they had more stores than they needed and the dead clusters were big (bottom boards covered and dead bees on the frames covering the patches of brood, the hives were dry inside??? Hope this will be a better year . Jack

[Jen]

Sorry to hear that Jack 

'bottom boards covered and dead bees on the frames covering the patches of brood'

     Doesn't this indicate starvation, when the bees will not leave the cluster to go get food?

[Perry]

Starvation is usually found with bees headfirst in cells.

[Jen]

I considered that as well, but if the bees are found dead still clustered to the brood, wouldn't that be starvation as well? like it was just too cold to leave the brood to get food?

[Perry]

Cold starved. Possible, not enough to go on in the description.

[camero7]

check for varroa scat in the cells. Most times that is the problem with the virus they vector. Could also be nosema. Send some to Beltsville. it's free and they'll tell you what the problem could be.

[brooksbeefarm]

That's what got me looking in another direction, heads not in cells, no poop on top of frames or front of hive, no sign of condensation ?? Maybe just caught off guard before they could cluster. To many dead bees, couldn't find dead queens? The one lost at the neighbors was my last known Wayne's queen? Wouldn't think they would of made it up to two weeks ago this time of year to succumb to mites?? Jack

[G3farms]

Wonder if they were covering brood and would not leave it to cluster back up, thus they froze trying to keep the brood warm but too spread out to keep themselves warm?

[Slowmodem]

Wonder if they were covering brood and would not leave it to cluster back up, thus they froze trying to keep the brood warm but too spread out to keep themselves warm?

That has happened to me before.

[Bakersdozen]

Jack, I think we are close enough geographically to say that we had a similar winter.  No snow, but it was hard on our bees.  I lost a hive back in November that sounds similar to your lost hive.  I had treated for mites, so that wasn't it.  No condensation, had food stores, but dead bees were thick on the bottom board plus on top of frames, on top of the inner cover, and on frames.  It seemed like they didn't cluster. 
I talked to some respected beekeepers at a state meeting who led me to believe their losses were high and that winter had been quite brutal on them.  (no one ever seems to want to talk exact numbers) That was a week ago.  They agreed with me that the queens around here hadn't really started laying yet.  The temperature keeps fluxuating so.  A week ago if you looked at my hives you would think the queens were failing.  I just think their being clever and waiting for some consistently warm weather. 

[brooksbeefarm]

I have 15 queens coming tomorrow so i went to 2 outyards 45 miles away and found 3 more deadouts and one queenless hive?? These hives were strong two weeks ago (so i thought?) all of these hives had from 60lbs. to 100lbs still on there hives, none had heads in cells, but small clusters covering brood patches about the sizes of a golf ball on three to four frames and the bottom boards covered with dead bees, no sign of disease or moisture inside the hives? I'm thinking the crazy weather was the problem like G3 said, they just got caught off guard. I just got my computer and phone back up yesterday, had a lightening strike from last Thursdays storm that cut the phone line in half . Weatherman said we have more coming through tonight and tomorrow , it's that time of year. Jack

[Perry]

Starting to hear from a few keeps up here that are finally getting the chance to have a first peek into some hives. Borderline starvation in a lot of them, the reserves are pretty much gone, and we still have 2 to 3 feet of snow on the ground. A lot of scrambling going on.

[LazyBkpr]

Jack, where are the queens coming from?   Just wondering why you dont make your own queens, or let the bees do it with larvae from those hives that survived?  I have really good luck with wintering bees when I do that...

[brooksbeefarm]

LazyB, i raise most of my queens, but like to buy some every year or so to keep down inbreeding? With the loses i've had i'm starting to rethink this practice . I have one out yard that has three hives that  haven't been treated or requeened in over 10 years (i had 4 there, but lost one last year), there are 7 others hives about 100 yards from them that were started from swarm cells from other yards or swarms i caught from home and took up there. Mother nature (or something?) has been rough on me last winter and this spring. I did bring back 4 five frame nucs(yesterday)with three frames of bees and brood for the new queens coming this evening (with storms coming in), i will have to bank 11 of them till i can get to some out yards to split more hives for bees and brood. I did find one hive that was queenless and another one that was weak and had 3 frames with small amounts of capped brood and some larva about to be capped but no 4,5,6, day larva and i couldn't find the queen (went through it twice?) If eggs were there i probably couldn't see them anyway. Jack

[Jacobs]

I'm wondering about nosema ceranae--a potential bee killer without all the poop of nosema apis.

[LazyBkpr]

I think its a good practice Jack, but if I start to run into trouble overwintering I will quickly get more selective of the queens that I order.  Where I order them from etc..    I have no doubt of your abilities, and wasnt trying to insinuate you didnt know what you were doing, but its because I know your capable that I was thinking of the genetics causing problems.