Winter Survivior Evaluation

[Tucker1]

Most of us in the northern climates has moved into actual spring time weather unless you live in parts of Canada or Alaska, although it snowed in Washington State, just last week.

This invites a simple question, assuming you went into winter with 2 Large Brood Boxes (20 frames), full of bees and winter stores (honey)

What is considered a good or acceptable colony starting up for the colony in spring?  (Survivor rate?)
verse the point where you'd consider this a weak colony and combine it with at stronger colony?

Regards,
Tucker

 

[Brian D. Bray]

Depends, somewhat, on the type of bees.  With Italians a larger cluster of bees is needed than with Carnies or Russians.  With Russian a baseball (hardball) size cluster can bounce back and still produce but I like to keep mine at a size more like that of a softball or larger.  With Italians a cluster the size of a softball won't make it, it will dwindle to nothing before the hive can build up.

This all with the given that the hives survived the winter and we're now into February or Early March with some store still available.

I think one of the reasons for the difference in the survival between the types of bees is that Carnies and Russians are more willing to gamble on growth verses stores.  They will build a brood chamber larger than they can cover and rely on the warmer weathers of spring to help the brood survival rate.   But this also shorts the hive of edible stores in the spring making Carnies and Russians more prone to Spring starvation losses.  Italians, on the other hand, will put by more stores as the build up and will only increase the brood chamber as they have bees to cover the combs.  This means a slower growth rate but makes it a more sustainable growth in the event of prolonged inclimate weather.

[Tucker1]

Brian:
        When I inspected my colony in March, the bees (carnies) were not gathered in a ball or sphere ..... they had already spread out over about three frames (both sides). This seems about equivalent to loosely packed soft ball. Would you agree?


        They still had plenty of honey stores, but we're also being feed using the slit plastic bags. I had been providing this supplemental feeding since early Feb.

         I had read that bees will sometime starve during the winter even if honey is available in the hive, because they will not move or spread out far enough to find it. How can this be remedied?

Regards,
Tucker

[Brian D. Bray]

Brian:
        When I inspected my colony in March, the bees (carnies) were not gathered in a ball or sphere ..... they had already spread out over about three frames (both sides). This seems about equivalent to loosely packed soft ball. Would you agree?


        They still had plenty of honey stores, but we're also being feed using the slit plastic bags. I had been providing this supplemental feeding since early Feb.

         I had read that bees will sometime starve during the winter even if honey is available in the hive, because they will not move or spread out far enough to find it. How can this be remedied?
Regards,
Tucker

I've talked about this before but it never hurts to repeat for those who might have missed the postings. 

Bees cluster in 1 place, at or near the top of the brood chamber, so supers that have frames that have never had brood in them will not have the bees cluster there.  By placing a medium or shallow super or virgin comb honey as a 3rd or 4th box, above the cluster gives themless distance to go to get stores. 
The bees will break cluster on warmer (sic) winter days and gather honey from the storage frames and bring it back and place it the the brood frames around which the bees are clustered.  The overriding problem is that the bees, like people, make the shorter trips 1st so that as the winter progresses they have to travel further and further from the cluster area to gather stores.  This increases the likelihood that the bees might get caught away from the cluster when a cold snap hits or the cold snap lasts too long for the bees to get to the stores.
The best way to over come the problem is as follows:  As soon as weather permits after, or during a long cold spell, enter the hive(s) and move swap the empty frames next to the cluster with the outer storage frames.  If needed you can even break the hive apart and pull full frames of honey from the lower box to place beside the cluster, as long as you don't disturb the cluster.  You can do this in cold weather as long as it is dry, rain, fog, or snow will get the bees wet and they will freeze.

Hope that answers your question.

[Tucker1]

Brian:  That certainly does. The point about them not moving to supers that never had brood present was something that I didn't know. I assumed that they would travel to where ever honey was present in the hive. I had placed frames with honey in close proximity to the frames that had brood present, as the hive went into the winter months. If I'm understanding you correctly, completely encircling the cluster with old brood frames that now contain honey is the ticket. When inspecting the hive during winter months, I need to be ready to do this fairly quickly.

        I had been very hesitant to open the hive during the coldest days of the winter; fearing that the bees could never make up for the loss of warmth. Even during the sunny/warmer days of winter, I would have everything prepositioned so that if I opened the hive to place split plastic bags of sugar on top of the frames filled with bees, .......this would take place in a period of time less than 30 seconds.

        Thanks again for clearing this up. There are a lot of techniques and "bits of knowledge" to be learnt.

Regards,
Tucker