help with post-mortem

[bhough]

Dear Friends,

Just went to inspect my three hives and all are lost.  I went into the winter leaving most of the honey on.  Two hives had two full bodies of pollen and honey and the third (which was a swarm I hived in the spring) and one deep and one super full.  There were bees on the exterior of each hive coming and going, but not much inside.

When I opened the box, there were very little bees and unfortunately, it smelled like beer.  I don't think i had enough ventilation over the winter.  (I live in Pittsburgh, PA)  I had only the opening at the bottom board and did not use any entrance reducers or mice screens.  The entrances were not obstructed by dead bees. I also found many, many bees dead with their head in a cell implying starvation with honey all around. 

I'm trying to figure out the best way to ventilate for next winter.  I know that many of you like to shim the top or use top entrances.  Does anyone drill the top super, or drill a hole in each deep and each super?  Adding an empty super with a bunch of holes either with or without a screen seems like too much woodwork for me. 

Thanks for any suggestions/corrections you can give me.  Hopefully I'll build back up with some swarm calls this Spring!
b

[Scadsobees]

If they had honey anywhere near, they didn't starve.  The beer smell is fermenting honey.

What did your mite count look like in the fall, and did you do anything to treat them?  How big were the dead clusters inside the hive? <added:> and how did the bees look going into the fall? Healthy? Booming?

Ventilation could be an issue, but only if there is actually water in the dead cluster, or the cluster appears very wet.  The reason that poor ventilation kills is because of the condensation forming on the inside, dripping in onto the bees and causing them to lose heat.

After 5 years and many dead hives, I had my first hive starve this winter, and that is because they were a late swarm in a single deep with not enough honey and a huge cluster.

Rick

[RayMarler]

Fermented honey comes from not ripened honey going into winter. If the bees ripen it before the cold sets in, the moisture content is low enough that it won't ferment. Feeding syrup too late in the fall can cause the bees to not have enough time to ripen the syrup before cold weather sets in. Just mentioning this incase that is what happened. I try to get all my needed feeding in prep for winter done by Nov. 1 here in Ca.

[Robo]

I wouldn't jump so quickly to blaming just ventilation and miss another possible cause.  Rick and Ray make very valid points. 

We use to have a member here, Finsky,  who kept bees in Finland which has much longer and harsher winters.  He never provided any top ventilation because of heat loss.   His method was to make sure the top of the hive had high insulation properties than the sides and bottom.  This way moisture would not condense on the top and drip down on the bees.   I tried it this year with 8 hives.  I put 2" rigid insulation on top of beemax hives.   All 8 are still going strong.  The bottom boards are wet and frozen with ice, but the bees are nice and dry and toasty warm.

I also don't feed syrup in the late fall or winter,  but use candy if additional feed is needed.  Not only will syrup ferment, but it can also cause dysentery.

[Kathyp]

robo, what did you use for insulation?  i know the bees can chew Styrofoam.  tried that  :-D  they took it out in chunks.

[Robo]

robo, what did you use for insulation?  i know the bees can chew Styrofoam.  tried that  :-D  they took it out in chunks.

Been there done that too,  last year a matter of fact :-P  This year I purchased a 4x8 sheet of 2 inch rigid foam that had foil on both sides.  From what I have seen so far,  they have not chewed it at all.  I won't know for sure until I get a better look when I remove it.  Hopefully warm weather is on it's way.

[tillie]

Bees can starve with honey all around.  If it's too cold for them to move to where the honey is stored in the hive, they will starve where they are, heads down in the cell as you found, with plenty of stores in the hive.   You can even find them dead, heads down in the cell with honey in that frame around the edges if it were too cold for them to move there.

Linda T in Atlanta

[Brian D. Bray]

Bees can starve with honey all around.  If it's too cold for them to move to where the honey is stored in the hive, they will starve where they are, heads down in the cell as you found, with plenty of stores in the hive.   You can even find them dead, heads down in the cell with honey in that frame around the edges if it were too cold for them to move there.

Linda T in Atlanta

Tillie is correct.
Also, a hive can bee wintered in a drain pipe, if it's covered.  I've just over winter 2 hives, bottomless, slatted racks, with an small upper entrance as a vent.  Temps got down into the single digits.  I could have closed the bottoms using mite monitoring boards but chose not to.  The point is it is not the cold itself that will kill the bees but a combination of things from too little stores, condensation (improper ventilation), prolonged cold periods where the bees can't get to stores further from the cluster, and a sudden clold snap that catches the bees out of cluster, to name a few.

A postmortem needs to be done to see what all the factors are with all the above considerations, plus mites, put in the mix to see what the evidence will support.

[bhough]

Thanks guys.  Those are good ideas.  I will put on my thinking cap and get back to work!
b