Post-mortem

[Kris^]

Today the temperatures were cooler so I broke down the last hive that died and did autopsies on all the other hives that had died since January (I'd put the other three dead hives in the garage until I could examine them.)  The most recent hive had a lot of bees in it, all clustered around where brood was developing near the center of the bottom box.  There was food just out of reach of the cluster.  This hive died during the cold spell we had before St. Patrick's day.  Classic case of protecting the brood but starving the colony.  Odd thing is, the brood looked like it was all drone cells, so I'm thinking the queen died and a worker started laying when the hive started ramping up for spring.  It would've just been a slower death if not for the freeze.

Another hive also looked like it starved and froze, although this one had separate smaller clusters throughout the hive and a lot of dead bees on the bottom.  The two hives I got from Harvey last July had surprisingly few bees in them, although there were a lot of bees laying on the ground in front of the hives.  For the most part, the bees in the hives were head-first in the cells.  I saw no sign of varroa in any of these hives, although I found a beetle in one of the Harvey hives.  All of the hives had some brood that had been in various stages of development before freezing.

I feel pretty confident that disease did not kill these hives.  Rather, I think it was the weird winter we had that did them in.  After a warm beginning to the winter, then going through about 5 cycles where we'd have a week or so of warm weather followed by a quick snap of a couple days of very low temperatures was apparently too stressful for some of my hives.  But I still have 5 fairly strong ones now.  So I'll split a few and increase that way.  This is the first year I didn't buy any packages for "insurance,"  so I was worried when I saw the count dwindling as spring rolled in.

My total loss this winter was 50%, but it apparently wasn't CCD -- it was just a plain ol' bad winter for the bees.

-- Kris
     

[Michael Bush]

Most people around here have been saying they lost 3/4 to 1/2 of their bees under similar circumstances, where they were brood rearing in December when the temperatures were in the 50's F and then dropped to -12 F or more for a couple of weeks.  They couldn't move off of the brood and many died.

I just went through mine thoroughly today and couldn't find any more then a few (five or ten) Varroa on the bottom boards.