While checking my bees the other day I suddenly realized that they are wintering better than my bees did back in the 80's before we had either type of mite.

The winter here in the mountains of north Georgia has been consistently cold and since Christmas, damp. I had a chance to make a cursory check of my bees and found a winter loss of less than 2%. The clusters are also larger than usual and I attribute that to good dry weather during the Fall goldenrod flow. This is good for I have commitments to raise queens and  sell more than 100; 5 frame nucs in April. The honey flow begins on May1.

 Interestingly my neighbor beekeepers who wintered other than Russian bees have losses amounting to 50% of their hives or even more. One of my neighbor beekeepers has booked to purchase 300 packages because of severe winter loss and hopes to make up some losses by splits. Since we keep bees in the same area the difference can only be the pure Russian stock.

I extend my sincere sympathy to all beekeepers who have severe winter loss. There is indeed a cause that hopefully will be soon found.

Carl Webb

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