Miss Beehaven with Hobbit Queen

It’s taken me about two weeks to even consider how to write this post. The mere thought of writing this news, and then sharing it with you causes tears to well up in my eyes. Yes, I’m a sentimental fool. As Hobbit King says, “Hobbit Queen, you wear your feelings on your sleeves.” And, sadly, he is right.

We lost all five of our hives.

Sunday, February 23, 2014 was a nice, warm day to explore in our honey bee apiary. As we approached the hives, we became skeptical about how our bees might have fared. They were too quiet.

Originally, we were going to peak at the bees, head back up to the house, put on our bee suits, and go back down to the apiary to check out the hives. But, our fears were confirmed when we moved into the apiary, without bee suits, and the noise was deafeningly silent. We knew from past experience that the apiary should have been humming with life. It wasn’t. We saw a single bee flying. We couldn’t confirm if she was one of our bees. After opening up a hive, we figured that the bee we saw most likely was a visitor coming to rob an empty hive.

Yes, all five of them were empty. Deathly empty. The following pictures show what we found. I think the pictures speak to what we saw and felt much better than any words I can use to describe as we moved from hive to hive. They were all the same.

Honey bees dead on top of frames of a hive.

Small cluster of bees dead on a frame near a brood area.

Honey bees dead on the screened bottom board of a hive.

What happened?

We really don’t know. We suspect several things came together for the perfect death sentence for our bees.

1. The hives probably went into the winter weaker than we realized.
   1. We had a very damp spring and summer. We had repopulated four hives with packages and five new queens.
   2. If pollen and nectar are not available when the honey bees forage, then the queen senses the potential for starvation and backs off laying brood.
   3. Was this the cause? We don’t know, but we think it probably contributed to the beginning of their death.

2. We had very cold temperatures with brutal winds this winter. The deep cold temperatures lingered longer than a couple of days.
   1. If the hive is weak, the cluster will naturally fall off in numbers and a vicious cycle begins of those bees on the outer fringes of the cluster dying off. The cluster gets smaller, and more bees die as a result of the cold reaching into the hive.
   2. The small cluster remaining on a frame (See the middle picture above) and the large number of bees on the screened bottom board (See the last picture) suggests the bees froze to death because the cluster of bees was not strong enough to sustain the hive’s required temperature.
   3. Four of the five hives had nice stores of honey above the brood chamber. However, in all cases the frames down near the brood chamber were empty. Based on what we’ve been able to ascertain, this tells us that the bees may have starved, but we can’t say for sure. Despite food being only inches away, the honey bees will not leave the brood. The ladies will do all they can, including to die, to keep the brood warm and protected.
   4. There may have been an unusual draft issue with our hives. Our apiary sits down in a valley. The wind whips through. This winter the wind was especially voracious. We use a snow fence to block the snow and to break the wind currents. However, this may not have been successful.

3. There could be other factors, such as varroa mite issues. But, we do not have any evidence that this was an issue.

What will we do next?

We are taking a break this year to reassess. There are many honey beekeepers that have lost hives. The cost to restock is at a premium. We think we will wait one year, as we also understand that this spring and summer will be another wet year for our area. We don’t want to repeat receiving bees late in the season, as we did last year, and then set the hives up for failure before they even have a chance to prepare for winter. We plan to continue to participate in our local bee association and to continue to learn about the honey bee, while we prepare to tackle raising bees next year.

What does this mean for this blog?

I will post to this blog as I acquire new knowledge, find leads on good resources that my followers will find helpful, as well as share updates on our plans. I know from comments I’ve received from many of you that my prior posts have been helpful. I do have several people who use the Hive Building 101 blog post as a reference to teach others.

Hobbit King and I are still saddened by our loss. For me, it is almost as though I’m going through the grieving process, as silly as that may sound to some. I thought of our little ladies as anyone would. I loved them and took great pride in trying to do my part to offer them a place to forage and prosper. They brought joy to me as I’d watch them work and thrive. It breaks my heart to think I may have done something, or worse, not done something that I should have.

With that, I sign off and wish all my honey beekeeper friends great success this coming year!

Please post about your ups and downs, leave comments, and keep Hobbit King and I in the loop as you learn this year. We want to hear from you, too!

We appreciate all honey beekeepers everywhere and look forward to getting back into the apiary real soon!
Cheers,
Hobbit Queen