In beekeeping, loss is part of the game. We are sad to report that we lost two of our hives early in the winter. While the loss is very sad for us (we get attached to our hives and root for them!), it is not unusual. In fact, in past years our loss has been very minimal, making us almost feel 'due' for a devastating year. What leads to hive loss? In short, many factors. When a hive is lost (called a dead out), the beekeeper will often perform a 'hive autopsy' to determine the cause of the loss and learn for next time. It's more than a little like playing CSI with several hundred dead bees and lots of sticky equipment. Common factors include: varroa mite infestation, moisture (bees deal with cold well, but not moisture), toxicity from accumulated chemicals, and starvation. Even in a hive full of 80 pounds of honey, bees can starve only an inch away from their food. This is because when the hive is cold enough, bees are unable to move at all. If it stays cold enough for long enough, starvation can occur desperately close to an abundance of honey. That said, varroa mite infestation and its resulting complications is the number one cause of hive loss. Our Hive Investigation We lost two hives over the winter. One was a mature hive which had weathered last winter and had been very successful through last season. The second was a small, immature hive (called a nuc) which was the result of a late season split. We had provided this nuc extra insulation and resources in an effort to help it through the winter, to no avail. In our large hive, starvation seems to have been a possible factor. In our small hive, there were some small signs of moisture. Both hives exhibited some symptoms of varroa mite infestation. Our belief is that a variety of factors led to our hive loss. We were behind in our fall treatment of our hives as a preventative of varroa mites. We believe a mite load may have already weakened our hives and then we combined it (inadvertently of course) with a late treatment that further stressed them and a coincidental cold snap (remember that VERY cold stretch at the beginning of winter?). We think this combination of detrimental factors was enough to doom our hives early in the winter. Luckily, we found no evidence of more serious, contagious disease. The Good News There's always some good news in beekeeping. Having early season hive losses means that the hives maintained many of the resources (read: honey and pollen stores) which can be used for next season. Since thee is no sign of communicable disease, it is safe to reuse the same equipment. We have ordered new nucs of bees, which will arrive in late spring and will be able to use what the old hives left behind. Being able to start new hives with stores of honey, pollen and drawn comb on frames will save our new hives very valuable time and energy and mean they will be much stronger much faster. It also gives us a chance to clean and strategize with our equipment. Bees create a substance called propolis in the hives. It's antimicrobial and if often used to essentially plug holes in the hive-- like winterizing your home and using draft stoppers on your doors and windows. The trouble is that it is either very sticky or hard as cement- making hive maintenance more difficult. With an empty hive, we have the opportunity to do our best to clean up our equipment for easier handling. We can also strategize on how to best arrange frames/resources in a new hive to promote activities we are interested in-- such as creating opportunity for bees to draw their own honeycomb on new frames so that we can harvest cut honeycomb. This is very energy intensive work for bees that can only be completed at certain times of year and when we are able to provide the bees a proper setup. So, in this case our unfortunate loss also provides us an opportunity for a head start and increased high-value product for next fall.
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