Winter Loss Spring 2006

From our Early Spring 2006 Newsletter

I have just finished checking all of my honeybee colonies and have found normal winter loss (20%) compared to last season (about 60+%). The relatively mild winter, along with the fact that most varroa mite infected bee colonies died last year, and also using some new natural controls with essential oils, have reduced our losses.

I check the colonies to see if they have enough honey left in them for the honeybees to live on until spring. Feeding them dry sugar is an emergency measure to keep the bees from starving. In this picture I have removed 3 frames from the extra super that I left above the inner cover and poured in about 5 lbs of dry sugar. This sugar is consumed or removed before the main honeyflow where the honey that we harvest is produced. The sugar just keeps the bees alive and never gets into the honey!

We will be making many replacement and new colonies (splits - making 2 colonies from one overwintered one) in May. Hopefully we will be up to normal honey production and have comb honey available again this year.

View our "Year in the Beeyard" pictorial to see other things done in the beeyards in the spring.

The Hibernation Diet

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