Bees

[helen99]

Our bees had clustered and were doing fine .. until this week. Rialian found them all dead yesterday evening, many in mid-activity, most in the cluster. It's possible they swarmed a couple of times (there were several empty queen cells visible, although those could have been killed off by the reigning queen). There were also new bees just emerging from the cells. If the cold had waited another week or so, they may have had the numbers necessary to generate enough heat. This was disappointing - I'd kind of hoped that this particular hive would overwinter. Rialian collected the wax and honey and spent most of the night boiling down the wax and extracting the honey. The bees hadn't even touched the syrup he'd given them - there was still plenty of honey for them. We got a large chunk of wax and several large combs full of honey. Not what we were hoping for this year, though. We'd planned to let them keep that for the winter. We'll start over next year, probably at the new place, maybe look into better sheltering. When we looked at the hive, we saw that they had patched up all possible rain entrances with wax, and some of the bars were patched together. There was a lot of burr comb on the edges, but the interior combs were straight and separate - very easy to lift out. They had done a wonderful job. Unfortunately the cold snap came about a week too soon.

Comments

[helen99.livejournal.com]

Thanks... looking at the plus side, if it got cold enough to kill bees, maybe it got cold enough to kill some of the mosquitoes that would have bred and hatched the coming summer. Rialian's dad's beehives survived, so it may be a matter of placement. Rialian's dad also uses conventional Langstroth hives, which may provide more insulation with all the honey supers on top and the plastic comb frames. We'll see if they survive the entire winter, but so far they're ok.