Rough winter for bees!

Today the high was 56 in Northeast Ohio, so it was time to check on the bees. When I went out in the afternoon, I saw bees flying happily in and out of the nuc I made in July from the Ohio Queen Program queen.

All of my other hives are dead now. I stopped up at the North hive yesterday to confirm the tiny cluster that was in there in November died off. It did. I took the remaining honey off the hive - about 40 pounds of mostly crystallized aster/goldenrod from fall. I put six of those frames on top of the nuc today to help it make it through.

I asked my Dad to take a look at the hive at his house (East) today also to see if they were flying. That hive looked really good in January when I had it open on a warm day. Unfortunately, they are also dead! How sad.

Being down to one hive out of five, I am wondering what approach I'll take in the Spring with bees. If the nuc makes it through the next month or two and can build up, I may be able to split it. Since both packages I bought last year are dead, I'm a little discouraged about packages from down South. I called a local pollination guy who sells bees to talk to him. He said he's seeing about 80% losses himself, and that's consistent with what other guys in the business are seeing up here this Winter. The weather just didn't cooperate last year. The dearth was too long, fall was too short, and bees couldn't brood up for Winter. He assured me that the problems last year were mostly due to weather, and that I should give packages a try again. I guess I have to think about that - at the very least, any package I buy at this point will get to build up on lots of already drawn foundation.

January Update

Judging from little yellow bits of wax cappings that have fallen on the snow under the hives through the screened bottoms, it looks like all four of the hives that were alive in December are still alive today. On the swarm hive at my dad's, the bottom of the cluster is all the way in the bottom of the hive. If you look up under there you can see them moving around. In the hives at my house, they are higher up in the boxes. I did not open up the lid on the Ohio queen nuc where I put sugar but I could see through a hole that there's still sugar piled up in there.

I read somewhere this week that the queen starts laying eggs for spring again shortly after the Winter Solstice. To the bees, spring is coming! The tough part now will be to be sure they have enough food to make it until spring. The long term forecast shows a warmup to almost 50 next week, so I may construct a candy board this weekend and put it on top of the hive at my dad's place on a warmer day, since they only have about one Medium box of honey stored up.

Dad has decided he will put the spare hive from the failed swarm in his cousin's yard where we caught the successful swarm last year. I will offer up a couple frames of brood comb from my failed hive to use as bait. Dad has really grown an attachment to the bees; I suspect we will add several more colonies at his house in 2013, through splits and swarm captures.

December update

We are having a nice warm early December in northeast Ohio. Today I checked on the bees and found that the Ohio queen hive and the swarm hive at my house and the swarm hive at my dad's house are still alive. The package hive at my house is dead and the one at Cora's house is small but alive.

I noticed that the Ohio queen hive is already in the top of the box, which is not good. Since the weather is going to be warm tomorrow again I put a quart of 2:1 syrup on there for them to take down.

A few recent pics

Bees between the frames after being smoked. This is in the top box on South Hive 1.

I had the new top feeder on Hive 1 with a gallon of syrup in it and lemongrass oil. I suspected robbing so I made a new entrance reducer to limit the entrance area they had to defend. 

I crushed and strained one frame of honey from the North hive. I stuck the wax in this jar and gave it to the bees to clean. They very efficiently took all the honey and left the wax.

This is why I added the entrance reducer to Hive 1. I don't think those are this hive's bees. They are clustered around the vent holes, where they are smelling sugar syrup and lemongrass oil.

Hive statuses

North hive: Boxes 1-3 are full of brood. Box 4 is full of capped honey. Box 5 was added two weeks ago and as of last Friday (August 17th) they had not started building comb in it yet.

South Hive 1 (from package): Boxes 1 and 2 are full of brood. Box 3 has 6 of 10 frames drawn and queen is laying in the new wax. There are some stores on the tops and edges of frames but nothing significant. I will monitor for the next couple weeks and start feeding heavy syrup if the fall flow doesn't have them putting on the pounds.

South Hive 2 (from swarm): almost identical to South Hive 1 but with slightly fewer bees and more stores.

South Hive 3 (OQP Queen in 6 frame Medium Nuc): 4 of 6 frames are partially drawn and queen is laying. They take syrup very slowly. I will try and make a top feeder for them this weekend if I have time. I am concerned that they will not build up enough stores for the winter.

East Hive (from swarm): First box is finally full. Added second box. Hoping they can build up some stores for winter.

North Hive Inspection

As usual the North hive is doing awesome. The upper (fourth) box of 8-frame mediums was completely packed with honey. I didn't see a single egg or larva, though I didn't take all the frames out. This hive is clearly doing great. Four mediums is what I hoped to over winter in, so I put on a queen excluder and another box. I need to find out if I can take a few frames of honey off and extract to have something for Christmas presents, and if they should get enough for winter out of the fall flow.

East Hive Inspection

I popped over to dad's house Sunday to take a look at the little swarm hive. Dad has been complaining of bald-faced hornets around the hive, so I had to get the different cover on the hive that will allow him to switch out the sugar jar without having to monkey around with too much equipment.

Overall the hive is weak. They have drawn out about 6 frames, which is about what they had two weeks ago, and two weeks before that. The county bee inspector stopped by last week and came to the same conclusion. Therefore, we must feed.

There is still a nice brood pattern, and about 4 solid frames of brood, but just not a lot of volume. Hopefully those four frames of brood will hatch in the next week or so and give the hive a good chance to take advantage of the fall flow and build up before winter.