Author Topic: Dead Bees (Read 3688 times)

hughesy · « **on:** February 13, 2013, 03:49:20 pm »

Quickly opened up our hives yesterday to put some fondant on for them. Out of the six, four are ok but two have died out completely. Must have happened fairly recently as one of them had taken most of the last lot of fondant. The other was our strongest looking colony and still has a lot of stores in the hive but all the bees are dead.

anderso · « **Reply #1 on:** February 14, 2013, 07:00:39 am »

sorry about the bees but I believe this year will get a lot more dead colonies,

when you say there was lots of feed in the hive was it above or below - if it was above it may have got a bit to cold for them to go to it.

I have found if feeding is to place some at the bottom of the colony

hughesy · « **Reply #2 on:** February 14, 2013, 03:42:43 pm »

The larger of the two colonies was on a brood and a half and had stores above and to the sides of where the cluster had been. The other one we'd given fondant and they'd taken nearly but not all of it. Doesn't look like they starved. All the hives had been buried in snow a couple of weeks ago but that doesn't seem to have affected the others.

Beeducked · « **Reply #3 on:** February 15, 2013, 06:39:35 pm »

Have lost 2 out of 3 of my colonies already

despite feeding.

Horrible year last year. Lost my best colony from the year before and the remaining colony swarmed and swarmed and swarmed despite all attempts to prevent leaving me with three small to medium sized colonies going into winter after a dreadful summer for bees.

Just hoping to get one through to spring and summer. Hearing from other keepers losses are going to be high this winter.

hughesy · « **Reply #4 on:** February 15, 2013, 07:47:01 pm »

Last year was indeed a bad one. We managed to increase from three hives up to six didn't have much choice really as we had to split colonies to avoid swarming. Didn't take any honey at all though and after hearing about the lousy time everyone had had we were quite pleased to at least come out of the year with six colonies. Looks like we'll be back to square one now though.

Plantoid · « **Reply #5 on:** February 19, 2013, 11:17:38 pm »

Quote from: hughesy on February 14, 2013, 03:42:43 pm

The larger of the two colonies was on a brood and a half and had stores above and to the sides of where the cluster had been. The other one we'd given fondant and they'd taken nearly but not all of it. Doesn't look like they starved. All the hives had been buried in snow a couple of weeks ago but that doesn't seem to have affected the others.

Don't be afraid to double brood and unite two colonies whilst the last few weeks of nectar flow are there . The bigger the food store in the brood boxes the better the chance of survival.

I don't know how things pan out where you are , we stopped taking off honey at the end of the first week of August and let the bees keep everything from then on .

hughesy · « **Reply #6 on:** February 20, 2013, 09:17:09 pm »

I don't know how things pan out where you are , we stopped taking off honey at the end of the first week of August and let the bees keep everything from then on .

We didn't take any honey and were feeding syrup August onwards as they had nothing.

hughesy · « **Reply #7 on:** April 25, 2013, 11:22:08 am »

Well it did indeed get worse. We lost five out of our six colonies. The remaining one is small but seems to be increasing now with a bit more brood every time we've looked. Well at least we've got plenty of spare equipment.