Yesterday the sun was shining and the air was very warm. I thought I should check out and see what I could see in the apiary. Was not very good.
I had 4 hives that were alive two weeks ago. Now I have two. I took a very quick peak inside these two colonies to see if there was activity in the two hives. I knew for sure were alive because they did not have any snow on their roof. The other two were still covered in snow. Makes sense eh? Goes to show how much heat the colony's make, enough to melt the snow on top. I did not look hard enough to see just how big the colonies were, but I could hear them, yes, alive. That is good.
At the end of the beekeeping season in 2006 I had hive numbers that had diminished from 10 down to 4. This has been a summer and winter of learning for me. This year I am heading off into the apiculture world with far more knowledge than I had last year. This is with great thanks to so much information gleaned from forum members and alot of thinking back on what I did last summer with my bees.
I firstly had thought that my decrease in numbers of hives was solely the result of the varroa mite. (And yes, Finsky, this destructor is worthy of mention. If you do not have a big problem with them, like I get the impression, then consider yourself a very lucky man.)
From my increasing understanding of bee behaviour and whatnot, I would say that yes, varroa did a horrible number on my colonies. I know that because of the mite count that I took before I applied the formic acid in mid September, after the honey harvest.
But, there was also other circumstances that I believe allowed the varroa to get so out of control. That being...I thought that my colonies never swarmed. Now I am of the belief that most of them probably did, when I wasn't looking (LOL). That would have decreased the colony sizes with the large counts of varroa mite living amongst a small number of bees.
Another problem was that I am certain that I did not keep an open brood nest and without a doubt in my mind, the queen became honeybound. Now this, we'll call it neglect, on my part is 100% due to inexperience and not understanding how important it is to ensure that there is plenty of room for the bees to store the nectar. THIS WAS MY BIGGEST MISTAKE. I know differently now. I am sure that the bees were short of room and were storing nectar in the brood nest. The queen did not have enough room to lay her VERY IMPORTANT enormous numbers of eggs. This made the colonies not grow properly because the queen just did not have room to build up the bees for wintertime. So, by the time the winter came, there was not enough bees to overwinter and keep warm.
If I could give any advice to a new beekeeper, I think that would be:
You must keep an open brood nest. Number 1 priority. The queen must have enough room to lay as many eggs as she possibly can. The beekeeper must ensure that there are enough honey supers in place so that the bees can spread out the nectar to reduce the moisture. If they have to store the honey in the broodnest, there will be no room for the babies. If you don't, surely they will swarm and the queen will not have enough room for egg laying.
Great day. Cindi