major depression setting in

[poka-bee]

Just quick, the boxes in the house worked to some extent..bees can & do get out of the tiniest cracks in boxes!  :shock: I was wondering why all the cats were in my room staring @ me this morning instead of getting into trouble like usual. There are around 200 bees flying in my kitchen!  I won't open the boxes till it gets warmer outside (if ever) but gotta catch the flyers before hubby wakes up :roll:  It's so cool to watch em clean each other off as I sprayed the piles/sugarwater & stirred em around last nignt.  Guess bees are like most other hurt animals, warmth & food/liquids help!  I know it's but a fraction of the dead but at this point every one will help!  Jody

[johnnybigfish]

Jody,
That is sooooo cooool!!!
Bees in the housE!
That sounds like the title to a book :-D

your friend,
john

[poka-bee]

  :lol:  Great idea John!! Maybe Samuel Jackson will make a movie!  All flyers are out in the hives now.  Walkers I put in the top super where the sugar water is.  Each hive went through around 3 cups of sugar water last night.  Making more now, waiting for it to cool a bit.  I did put the piles of bees from each hive into a different box.  I'm roasting in here though between hot flashes & furnace blasting to 80 :-P More & more of the bees are climbing out of the piles though.
Cats want nothing to do w my little friends, as the bees are in the laundry/kitchen area. The cats aren't even going to the food dishes which is highly unusual for my little dumplings! :lol:  More of "Bees in the Kitchen"  later! Jody

[johnnybigfish]

Lookin' forward to the next chapter, Jody!
I just went to walmart for a big bag of sugar...I looked in again this AM and I think theyre eating most the honey stores so I better feed tehm if I want to keep them :-\
Ok,...."Big Brown", the next Triple Crown Winner is waiting on me...Gotta few bucks on on the race. I gamble VERY RARELY but horse racing makes me ballll :'(. I watched
Smarty Jones a few years ago but put no money on him. When I see horses run down that straightaway I almost choke because of the big lump in my throat!

your friend,
john

[Kathyp]

they are flying today and into everything that might feed them.  good sign for survival, but honey production is still iffy.

[Brian D. Bray]

they are flying today and into everything that might feed them.  good sign for survival, but honey production is still iffy.

I just spent the entire day dismantling dead beehives.  I was able to salvage a Hive of Russians (combined what was still alive) and 1 of OWC.  So I now have 2 out of 5.  Both salvaged hives were out of stores also, the drones had been killed, all the eggs and larvae had been eaten, and they were starting to eat the Pupae as most of the capped cells showed signs being opened.  I found 2 partial frames of bee bread in the Italian hive and gave each remaining hive 1.  While I worked it warmed up enough for them to fly and they went wild--after any and everything that remotely smelled of honey.  My daughter left the lid on the syrup container (5 gallon bucket) aschew and a good number of bees got in and drowned.

I did leave a starter hive in the yard in case a swarm from somewhere else comes by, but my remaining bees have been so hard hit that swarming is out of the question for the rest of the year.

Took us an hour and a half to go through all the hives and consolidate everything down to 2 hives.  Made sure each of the hives had frames of clean drawn comb for storage and so the queen could begin laying again.  I then spent the remainder of the afternoon cutting comb with dead brood out of the frames and putting the emty frames in the boxes.  I have 8 boxes of frames with starter strips and some bits of comb.  The corner of my barn, where I keep the bee stuff, is bursting.  I won't have to build boxes or frames next year or probably the year after, if I buy some more bees. 

I plan on asking about some nucs, If they have mediums although I do have 2 deep nucs I can swap frames from, at the beekeepers meeting Thursday night.

I now have at least a ten pound pile of dead bees in my compost pile.

[Kimbrell]

So sorry to hear about all your troubles up in the Northwest.  I didn't realise the weather there would stay cold for this long.  Maybe things won't turn out as bad as you think.  We had a cool, rainy spring.  But this past week it's been close to 90 every day.

[Dane Bramage]

& the moral of the thread is.... no matter how horrible you have it, Brian's got it worse!   :'(

they are flying today and into everything that might feed them.  good sign for survival, but honey production is still iffy.

Kathy - I made a "forage image blog" thread, perhaps we can compare/contrast our forage areas.

My bees are going out, at least a little, even when it's cold & wet like this.  I hope it warms & drys up a bit soon!

Cheers,
Dane

[Cindi]

Brian, Jody, anyone else that has lost their bees to starvation.  I feel horrible for you, whodda thunk that this weather would have been so bad that bees are starving.  There is no bright side to this, so I can't bring you up by any words.  I just wish you well.

I had an almost starving situation a couple of days ago, I think I caught this colony just in the nick of time.  I saw many very lethargic bees on the bottomboard, lots of them.  I knew that they were starving and I immediately got the shim back on it and fed some food with the baggie feeder.  I dribbled a whole whack of honey on the top of the frames first and let it dribble down, not enough to hit the bottomboard and cause any problems with wet bees or anything, just enough for immediate feeding.  It was not my intention to do any work with the bees that day, we only had some very intermittent periods of part sun, but I did anyways.  I went through all the colonies and put the shims back on and gave them all a baggie of honey/water that I had mixed up for them.  They were all low on stores, I could see that, but no starvation issues.

We are going away for four days today, I am heading out this morning to put new baggies of food on their shims, that will hopefully hold them over for a few days.

This weather on our west coast has been excrutiatingly cold a wet, we all share that same weather pattern and it has been very bad for the bees.

I venture that the weather has made everything about two weeks or more late.  That shows through with many of my shrubs and perennial plants, the asparagus is the biggest teller of this tale.  The asparagus has been coming up for a couple of weeks now, but only two dinner harvests, the spears are pencil thin and hardly any.  That is the first time since I had grown them (over 15 years now) that we have not had magnificent harvests of big, fat, fat, asparagus.  I have never seen the patch so poorly growing.

The pink Bridal Veil X Bumalda is just beginning to open its buds.  It has always been in full blown out bloom by June 1.  Over two weeks late too, not a bloom on any of the blackberry yet. Maybe the warm weather will soon come?????

Try to keep your chins up with the bee losses, I know that it is very hard to do, but be grateful that all was not lost.  That is so difficult, so easy to say, but don't get sad or give up, just try to keep on keepin' on.  AND.....have that great day, wonderful day, we do live in a beautiful world.  Cindi

[annette]

I just returned from a vacation last night so did not get in to see the bees yet, but before I left I was feeding 2 of my hives that had hardly any stores. My one really strong hive that I was counting on to produce something for me seems to just be eating everything they make. The honey supers are light in weight.

When I get into them tomorrow, I will know the truth of this matter. I am really wondering if they will even make enough for themselves this year. I also was extracting honey last year this time.

I will have to stay on top of feeding them, unless things change. What a drag!! So KathyP you are not alone.

Annette in hot, dry, Placerville, they may be rationing water this summer.

[Sir Stungalot]

Well, last time I remember any honey to speak of was in 2005. It has been one non-stop problem after another for me. It has gotten to the point I do not even look for honey, just happy when a hive is doing ok.
Last year, not a drop of honey in the spring- then, in mid summer, some small flow produced a wonderfull rather dark honey. I had enough for my needs. I extracted by hand. I have thousands of dollars in extracting eqpt. sitting there getting dusty. I too feel depressed. Oh well....one day......
BTW...this year...nada. Just enough honey for the ants.