Winter losses 2012/13

[user 6228]

I'm led to believe, by someone who has copious data, that there is a very marked difference in suvival this year between Poly and Wood hives.

 

[VEG]

and who might that person with the data be? lol

 

[Black Comb]

I wonder if they measured the temperature in the hive?

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Obsessively!

 

[Robbie & Jans Bees]

I have 8 hives all national open mess floors this winter I put reducing bars on but forgot the mouse guards 3 hives had mouse damage but all queens in place marked yellow bar one which seems to have hatch some time in October but has eggs, grubs and brood. Looking forward to a nice sunny weekend in South-East Cornwall. Robbie

 

[enrico]

All my hives in open position on hill side , open mesh, no extra insulation, no oa treatment, no dummying down of hives, all survived and look healthy!
Who knows why some survive and some don't!

 

[m100]

I'm led to believe, by someone who has copious data, that there is a very marked difference in suvival this year between Poly and Wood hives.

In what direction?

This is from a small sample size but this winter I already have 200% higher 'total loss' with poly hives than with cedar hives (all with proven 2011 queens) With no known losses with 2012 queens.

Cedar hives are all top insulated with 25mm of celotex in the roof, solid or polycarbonate crownboards, all on open mesh floors, no matchsticks.

 

[user 6228]

In what direction?

This is from a small sample size but this winter I already have 200% higher 'total loss' with poly hives than with cedar hives (all with proven 2011 queens) With no known losses with 2012 queens.

Cedar hives are all top insulated with 25mm of celotex in the roof, solid or polycarbonate crownboards, all on open mesh floors, no matchsticks.

taken over large numbers poly had considerably more survivors

 

[Oscarmonster]

My 3 hives have all made it through. Plywood hives, OMF no insulation.

 

[For want of a better word]

My Grandfather had a colony of honeybees survive the winter of 1947 in an old compost bin... what does that prove ?

 

[Swarm]

taken over large numbers poly had considerably more survivors

Evidence?

 

[BeeJayBee]

@ DerekM & Swarm - I'm fairly sure ITLD mentioned in chat that his poly hives had a much higher number of survivors than his wooden ones.

 

[Black Comb]

I thought nearly all his were poly's

 

[Into the lions den]

Back today for first time in a while.

Current losses in polys running at about 18%, but as that includes the ones washed away in the floods its acceptable.

Same system, same environment, broadly similar forage......wooden hives running at over 40% losses with many more to come. ( tiny clusters and will collapse when they start to fly freely.)

All the units NOT exposed to neonics are terrible, way over 60% losses now, but thats down to lesser spring properity last year. All the poly hives worked OSR, so make of that what you will.

To Black Comb:

We have about approx 2700 when all full up.
This consists of:
800 Smiths (Wooden)
500 Langstroths (Wooden)
1400 Langstroth (Poly)
For various reasons ( still recovering from EFB outbreak and 2011 ws also hellish up here) we only peaked at 2350 last summer.

It seems to me a fair enough sample size to start drawing conclusions from.

To Swarm: We keep very good records of locational performance, including the type of hive. It is a huge huge file built up since the early 1980s, including the arrival of our first poly experimental unit in 1997. I am not about to publish it as it contains a lot of information of use to competitors. I will add information garnered from our experiences to debates however, but this is merely a bee forum, not a peer reviewed journal and you can take what I say as you find it. It is freely given, I am not trying to sell you anything, and if it is of value fine. If some of you think it a load of old cobblers thats fine too.

 

[mbc]

. I am not about to publish it as it contains a lot of information of use to competitors.

I wasnt aware that was a concern of yours as you have posted enough nuggets of info on here to help your competitors already.
FWIW I've always taken the view that there can never be enough home produced honey so competitors are rtealy the importers.

Edit: or did you mean competition for prime forage sites ?

 

[Black Comb]

Thanks ITLD. That has cleared things up.

 

[Into the lions den]

Edit: or did you mean competition for prime forage sites ?

Precisely. The spreadsheets all contain precise map references, and are available to the inspectors only. In the past when I have let things out with location info intact i have tended to find loads of hives arriving just over the fence, or the landowners gets approaches from other beeks, or even stuff gets stolen. (Lost my heather crop off nearly 50 hives one year, less than a week after hosting a heather picnic at the place, which was well hidden away.)

So.................general husbandry matters fine.................things that could get me more neighbours than I want.......nope.

 

[PBee]

Back today for first time in a while.

Current losses in polys running at about 18%, but as that includes the ones washed away in the floods its acceptable.

Same system, same environment, broadly similar forage......wooden hives running at over 40% losses with many more to come. ( tiny clusters and will collapse when they start to fly freely.)

All the units NOT exposed to neonics are terrible, way over 60% losses now, but thats down to lesser spring properity last year. All the poly hives worked OSR, so make of that what you will.
..........................

If you wish to go into it, how did the losses present or what was the actual cause of mortality?

Wintering has been normal here and whilst the east winds will obviously affect your part of the world more we probably get on average much more 'confinement weather' every year without these effects.

 

[Into the lions den]

If you wish to go into it, how did the losses present or what was the actual cause of mortality?

Wintering has been normal here and whilst the east winds will obviously affect your part of the world more we probably get on average much more 'confinement weather' every year without these effects.

Its not actually the winter that has been responsible, at least not on its own. Its far more the disastrous summer, and in our parts two such summers in a row. We got away with it somewhat last spring due to the lovely early weather and pollen in March, only to immediately slump into an even worse summer in 2012.

The old guys round here (I am only 58 so apparently count as a mere youth!) reckoned 2011 was the worst for 50 years (I think 1985 had slipped their memory) and 2012 was even worse.

Problem in autumn was hive condition. Not enough young bees, especially in the black bees. Those ones had slaughtered their drones in June, some of them in the first week, never raised any more, and even stimulative feeding and pollen in July failed to get the queens going properly again. Of course this did not apply to every hive, but was a strong pattern. They went into winter smallish but in the case of getting a spring like the year before a good many would have survived. Instead we get a winter that goes onand on and on, and only six days ago we had a storm of ice crystals that coated everything in the night.

MOST of the dead have just dwindled away to nothing. A little dead cluster o bigger than the palm of your hand left in the centre, which may or may not contain the queen. Plenty stores, plenty entombed pollen. Many queenless or drone layers. For the first time in many years we have a significant minority showing some signs of staining, but very few of those are severely fouled.

A FEW showing the 'exploded cluster' symptom, where all the bees are dead but at the extremities of the brood box.

Black bee losses by far the highest.
Non black bees the most likely to be showing some staining.

In both cases poly hives far far lower incidence of the symptoms. Attributing this to the boxes being warmer in winter is, I feel, erroneous. They had a better hive environment in late summer and were far more likely to raise another generation of brood prior to going into winter (we could see this difference in Spetember when stripping off the heather honey) and thus simply had enough young bees to withstand the winter. Very few signs of varroa, and few varroa noted on the floors of the dead outs.

So, not the winter that killed them per se, it was lst summer, exacerbated by the length of winter. Until the cluster gets very tiny the cold itself will not kill them. Already have all the northern dead outs fumigated with acetic acid as a precaution againt nosema spread.

Even on this forum this outcome was predicted by me way back at the tail of last summer. The weather alone from late May right through was enough to give rise to this effect. 1985 was much the same, and winter carnage followed, perhaps even worse than this. No need to introduce new variables to explain it. All the old killers that gave rise to losses in the past are still out there. Add varroa pressure on top and we have major issues to face, and a double whammy of horrible summer and bad mating, run on into a very long winter with the worst weather at the most sensitive time, and a poor outcome in inevitable.

 

[PBee]

.......
In both cases poly hives far far lower incidence of the symptoms. Attributing this to the boxes being warmer in winter is, I feel, erroneous.
.........

Eastern coasts definitely had the worst of the weather at times.

On the hive set up - the more insulated conditions in winter in poly probably mean one lessened stress factor. This was my first winter on mostly solid poly floors and I was surprised by the 'dryness' of the hives despite being completely sealed bar the mouseguard openings. Some recent reading suggests that the absolute minimum ventilation in winter is optimum as it reduces metabolism and associated stresses.