Winter Losses

[Neils]

as I posted on the Blog (http://www.sbai.org.uk/sbai_forum/entry.php?121-Winter-Losses) I'm doing a bit of a straw poll on winter losses across the forums.

This is not a "scientific" poll by any stretch of the imagination and I'm not trying to compare forum by forum or hive type by hive type, just to get what might be some interesting figures on how bee colonies have done this winter. I've done a trawl of forums that don't have a specific winter loss thread but I was just hoping that if people were interested in an entirely non scientific bunch of figures.

At the moment I've counted across the various UK forums (and other firm numbers that I know of) 361 colonies (nucs and full hives) reported as going into winter with 52 recorded losses (14.4%)

For the purpose of these figures, colonies reported as drone laying, superseded or combined at this point I've not counted as a winter loss.

I dare say that these are optimistic numbers, but I do have a fair few reports of large numbers of colonies that should be offsetting guys like me with 1-3 colonies, in fact at the moment I'm running nearly double the average number of colonies compared to BBKA numbers (8 per beek compared to their average 4.7)

[GRIZZLY]

"Sorry" Nellie,don't have any losses this year.In fact colonies have come thro' the strongest I can remember for some years.

[EmsE]

Both mine have come through well (so far anyway). My friend called today to say her 1 colony is going great too.

[Hoomin_erra]

Both of mine made it through.

[Neils]

"Sorry" Nellie,don't have any losses this year.In fact colonies have come thro' the strongest I can remember for some years.

The lower the number gets the happier I get. (if you want to be counted, I need to know how many colonies you started with, "they're all fine" doesn't help the figures ;))

I've recounted including combined colonies and drone layers and am a shade over 15% in total. Excluding those to simple "I opened the hive and they were dead" it drops to 13.9%

I think these numbers are fairly optimistic though. The majority of the loss reports are from multiple colony beekeepers which doesn't surprise me on figures gathered from public forum posts.

I'm running at an average colony per beekeeper of 7.8 which isn't far off twice the BBKA average number.

[GRIZZLY]

Hi Nellie,I started this last winter with 4 colonies after the losses of the previous year left me with 1 out of 5. Incidentally I,m coming down to the Bristol area for the day on Sunday,following a visit to Stoneleigh ,if you're available.Will you let me know if its possible to meet up.(as our previous pm's)

[Neils]

Sounds good to me, I've got a pile of supers in the shed need making!

Should be around all day on Sunday so happy to buy lunch and/or look at some bees if you fancy. Not going to get to stoneleigh myself (again!) this year.

[POPZ]

Hi Nellie. An interesting little survey you are conducting because the published/quoted/hearsay losses always seem to be rather different! Anyway good luck to you and the results will be most interesting. I hope that others contribute to help give a fair picture.

My figures are four started the winter and still four flying nicely.

[Neils]

I'm starting to think that it's actually relatively meaningless in some respects. The only loss reports going up in threads like this one are from people with 6+ colonies and only where they've lost a couple. I've scoured other threads for "my bees died, what went wrong?" but the more figures I enter, the lower the number gets.

I think that when the BBKA's numbers come out later in the year that they'll be closer to mine that the press figures but that I'm very much underestimating the figures simply because people with 1-6 colonies who had significant losses simply aren't going to post on a forum that they lost all their bees lest they be taken for a bad beekeeper. In fairness to the "natural" lot I believe they are even more so than us 1-2 colony beekeepers and perhaps under more [peer] pressure not to report things going wrong because they use superior methods (right?) and if you manage to lose your bees despite doing everything better, then you must have done something wrong.

It's been an interesting excercise though.

[Kate Atchley]

Having kept bees in varroa areas for 14 years, it's startling to find here in Lochaber - still free of varroa (touch wood) - the folk with bees simply don't seem to have 'winter losses' in their beekeeping vocabulary. My 6 colonies came through fine and the 5 nucs I gave to beginners also. I've heard of an occasional loss but two of those seemed due to queens identified in the Autumn as poorly mated or not laying well. One was isolation because the queen excluder was left in, I suspect.

The varroa-free areas are surely bee havens!

[Trog]

It's still possible to have heavy winter losses without varroa; it happened here a few years ago when everyone in Scotland lost lots of bees, regardless of their varroa status. I reckon our losses that year (we went down from 8 to 3 colonies) were due to wildly see-sawing temperatures which caused more condensation than the bees could cope with. The hives were dripping wet when eventually opened up. We lost one colony to isolation starvation this winter, around Christmas and, no, we hadn't left the qx in! They were our least-native ones and the least nice-mannered.

[Neils]

I stopped counting in the end. It was interesting excercise, and even trying my hardest to count anything that could be considered a winter loss I eventually hit <10% loss. Part of the problem might actually be what to consider a loss. I've got 1 colony going absolutely bonkers with 3 supers on it at the moment and 2 that are struggling, one especially so. Neither of them I'd actually consider a winter loss though.

What eventually became obvious was that people reporting losses were the 4-5+ colony beekeepers. the 1-2 colony guys reported everything as being fine, but rarely "everything's died" and the later in this particularly balmy spring the more the good news came in.

I would like to thank everyone that responded on the various forums and by email to let me know how they'd got on, I just don't think I'm getting accurate figures and/or I don't have the right methodology sorted to get a decent picture.

I guess it's possible that this is a fantastic year and most people didn't lose a significant number of colonies, the BBKA's figures will be interesting.