Tentative early indications.
Bees been flying for a good empty out today, went round a few places this morning for a quick check.
Poly hives with syrup left in their hive top feeders were up there taking a little syrup. Not so in wooden hives.
However, by last place I decided to take a rough tally. this was a relatively late lot home that came in in a couple of waves, the last of them at the end of October.
144 hives. 90 had finished their syrup earlier and the feeders were taken away pre winter. 54 still had their feeders on so had not finished at the time we needed the feeders for other hives. Its among the ones that had not finished their syrup that you would expect to see the ones in trouble.
Only one dead, but you could see from the domed cells in the centre that it had been a drone layer.
Of the balance of the 54 non finishers most had by now either finished it or had only a litre or two left. With one exception these looked very good when the feeder was lifted off to check. So, of the 54 it seems as if only 11 look to be at all doubtful, and of the 90 that had finished none look doubtful. Of the doubtful ones I suspect half or thereabouts will make it through albeit rather small. The good ones are all from 5 to 11 seams of bees, averaging about 7, and as these are Langstroth deeps it means the bee power for spring is very good at this stage.
So, 144 hives, likely losses less than 11, projected maybe 7. Projected loss rate just under 5% and most of that looks like queenless issues.
Yesterday was at a group of the overwintering Smith nucs. 88 in total, none dead, and marked only 3 as likely losses. The rest had bees in 3 to 7 seams, and the clusters are down to or even below the bottom bars (looking up through the mesh floor). A couple of them had been a little light before Christmas so were given some invert syrup and were taking it quite well. Not bad.
Looks as if my earlier worries about burn out may not work out as badly as feared. We DO have apiaries showing the problem, but not more than 25% of them, so I have modified my winter loss projections down a bit. The bees that were at the heather in west Perthshire are the ones most likely to be too small.
All of course subject to how many queenless and drone layers we find in spring. We count those as losses too. however, looks for now as if our OWN issue in spring might be lack of empty hives rather than lack of bees this year. No chicken counting yet....but a generally reassured smile on my face today.
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Originally Posted by greengumbo
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