Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum

BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. => Topic started by: dfizer on May 08, 2013, 10:23:00 AM

Title: Initial findings of Winter Bee Colony Losses
Post by: dfizer on May 08, 2013, 10:23:00 AM
Interesting stuff....

http://beeinformed.org/2013/05/winter-loss-survey-2012-2013/ (http://beeinformed.org/2013/05/winter-loss-survey-2012-2013/)

David
Title: Re: Initial findings of Winter Bee Colony Losses
Post by: sterling on May 08, 2013, 11:24:04 AM
It would be interesting to know how many of these operations are using chemicals and how many were chemical free. :?
Title: Re: Initial findings of Winter Bee Colony Losses
Post by: Michael Bush on May 08, 2013, 12:11:09 PM
>It would be interesting to know how many of these operations are using chemicals and how many were chemical free

That information was collected and I suspect as the data is analyzed those numbers will be published.
Title: Re: Initial findings of Winter Bee Colony Losses
Post by: BlueBee on May 08, 2013, 01:24:57 PM
Thanks for the post.  That was interesting. 

I attempted to winter a good many small colonies (4 frames or less) this past winter and the cold did in a lot of them (but not all).  They froze in place after about the 4th cold wave.  I also lost a few larger colonies due to varroa (most of the bees had vamoosed before they froze).   I didn't treat for mites, I will this year.  The cold was more deadly than varroa in my case.