I guess I may not have been clear. During winter I sometimes witness high individual bee mortality in front of the hive. It does does eventually depopulate the colony over time as Gene mentioned. Since I went away from the top entrance, the colonies make it through the winter but will slowly dwindle in population to slowly die away as a colony. I did test the individual live bees after the cluster went from about 12 frames down to softball size in about a month (mid April to mid May), all had very high Nosema counts. Very few dead bees within the hive, as they are now able to fly away and die (warm daytime Ts).
Peter, the original chart I posted was my mental walk through of the failed hive events. It's a failure tree/5 why type analysis where you step through the what ifs and what may have caused it. There is rarely just one cause.
Blue is what I observed, Red likely reason/cause, Green what I could have done differently (important). Occasionally, you may find the exact reasons but due to the complexity of events, the data gaps, or a lack of knowledge, you will need to do your best. From these you identify actions and potential future flags as well as preventables. In this case, I should have had a friend feed my bees in August (or teach one how to) to ensure they had plenty of time to get ready. I should have pulled my honey before I left. These were all preventables. The high bee mortality at the front of the hive is now identified as a hive in trouble in my management approach. But basically even though my bees were very sick with Nosema C, it was my fault for not preparing them properly for winter. So the root cause of me losing all my hives was my management practice not Nosema C. Honeydew, cold weather, Nosema, dysentery, no local apprentice, etc... are all just basic causes.
How do you teach a new beekeeper? You can teach them to think, look for small details and learn to make decisions based on the information they have. How many hives are lost because of inaction? I do teach them a standard approach (calendar based on local data) but I also teach them to look for critical information (weather, incoming pollen, moisture on the landing board in the morning, growth rate in the hive (frames of bees), droppings on the screen bottom board tray, etc...).
***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html
|