Any Bee keepers in here?

Looking like this is the last snow for the season. I hope so!

 

I haven't seen any sign of the girls for several weeks. Then again, it's been bitter cold. Fingers are crossed.

 

It was 70* here on Wednesday but I wasnt able to check on the bees hopefully they were flying Im looking forward to spring time and getting back to working with the bees.

 

We did pretty well last year, 18 half-gallon jars and a couple of 1# and 2#ers. Unfortunately, I'm thinking we lost all of our hives this winter.

 

That sucks! We started 4 packages last year, only two made it to winter and both of them are dead. 0 for 4 gets expensive. I'm considering trying some top bar type hives this year. Hope I have time.

 

sorry to hear the bad news fellas. im not doing much better as i lost 2 with that last big cold snap two weeks ago. havnet done the port-mortem yet, but i suspect the population just got too small to keep the cluster warm enough. only have one left right now, but it is kicking really strong! as soon as our night temps hold above freezing i will combine all the honey and bee bread into this one hive and get it booming.

 

New to beekeeping. Bought a mini hive. Can't wait to get bees and try this new venture.

 

All tim or bob is going to do is ask if you treated for mites. No, "well you need to treat treat treat or your hives will DIE!" Yes, "well sometimes the mites get to them anyway once they get used to the treatments."
Two of mine died out like this. I think they didnt lay well in the fall to have enough young bees going into the winter. Eventually they dwindle to a point where they cant keep warm. You would think there would be lots of dead bees in the hive but i havent found this.
Why didnt they lay well in the fall? May have been stressed out from mites. Maybe no room to lay or not enough nutrition to raise brood.
If you purchased bees accustomed to treatments then you are stuck in that cycle of having to treat until you buy treatment free or collect feral swarms.

 

September is too late for a one time treatment, probably counter productive actually. The treatment is a blow to the bees as well, not just the mites. Starting end of august queen should be laying winter bees. Sept treatment did not effect the mites that were already on brood. Thus the winter bees werent the best. A second punch treatment may have helped. Sorry for your loss dave. If you descide to be treating again in the future, listen to what tim has to say.

 

http://feedabee.com/
Free pack of 200 seeds here!

 

First pollen of the year!

 

I have 4 packages coming in tomorrow. We will see how they do thus year...

 

It is with a heavy heart that I must say I lost both of my hives I fully expected to lose one of them as they were struggling all through the summer and with the extreme amount of time I was working last year I didnt have time to work with them I do blame myself for this I knew they werent ready going into winter but there wasnt anything I could do about it I didnt have or make the time for them like they needed I let them down and didnt prepare the hives properly for winter. Ill post some pictures tomorrow but tonight Ill be mourning.

 

4 packages installed in dead outs today. We left all the bodies with honey, pollen and drawn comb. We also extracted 2 supers of honey left over from our frozen hives. Can't wait for the woods to start to bloom...

 

Had some Italians move in next door today....


I had already gotten the number for a local bee keeper to come look at taking bees out of the over hang on the house. Called him up and came right out. They where able to get the vast majority of the swarm. Bad news is he doesn't want to mess with getting them out of the overhang.

This is the third swarm I've given away since we moved here 4 years ago.

 

Thats a big swarm!
Stuctural removals are interesting. They typically start at around $400. Check out JP the beeman on utube.

 

USDA reports that bee losses this and last year are up sharply. Mainly CCD. The wild honey bees here in the PNW seem to be pretty happy this year though. My flowering trees are covered in bees during the day. I have not gotten back into bee keeping since I lost my colonies 10 or so years ago to CCD. I also do not have room for them here like I did before. Anyway, the latest USDA bee report is not good:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/13/us-usda-honeybees-report-idUSKBN0NY1KU20150513