I've long been curious about why colonies in the North tend to build up
larger during the summer than colonies further south, as well as appear to
decline more quickly in the fall - Randy

 

One obvious difference is the number of hours that the bees in the north forage mid-summer.  Our bee counters show that in the middle and southern latitudes of the US, bees tend to get up as the sun comes up and shines on the entrances, race home as the sun set - in big clouds. 

In Missoula, Montana on June 21 (longest day), our bees get up and start foraging by 7 am (MTDST) and keep at it until 10:30 pm (MTDST).   


Peace River, Alberta area the times would be about 7 am to 10:41.   


San Antonio, TX the times are about 8 am till 7:30.


Also in our northern areas, the sun seems to set more gradually, so the incoming bees at end of day do not race back to the hives, but slowly taper off foraging, with the last stragglers coming in as darkness falls.



The other factor is that those of us in inland areas with severe winters, who have long kept bees in these areas, do not scrimp on size of colony nor food resources.  Given, as PLB showed in a recent citation, that about 1/2 of each colony's bee population going into the winter will die by spring (and that's what I and most of the commercial beekeepers up here anticipate), I agree with my original mentor - spring comes on late and fast.  Every bee still alive in the spring is worth any amount of honey needed to keep it alive - that jumps starts the colonies as they start later, but with longer days, than the more southernly bees.     However, a small colony in the spring is likely to grow slowly, since we tend to have a just after snow bloom, then spring rains, which will stall out the growth of small colonies.


Southwick found that bees are almost impossible to kill with cold if: 1) they have an adequate cluster size, and 2) they have adequate food supplies.  My opinion, scrimp on either and they're likely to fail over the winter.  Our rule of thumb, two story, minimum of 120# total weight of the boxes, bees and honey.  Some years, one can get through with one story, but then there's the year when it's warm and the bee consumer everything and starve (too active) OR when we get our usual Jan thaw (Chinook) followed by a really frigid Feb with a couple of weeks of howling winds coming down from Canada.  Then you need the bigger cluster and good food stores.   


P.S.  We always check food stores during the Jan warm up.  Low in January and they'll be gone by end of Feb.




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