I concur with Bill.


>I have found that you lose most of your colonies either in the beginning
>or the end of winter, not during the winter. If they start bad, they
>usually die early. They might also starve by early spring.

All my winter loss, too, occurred at the very end of this winter: during
the last week of February in Oklahoma.  (I lost some to wandering heifers,
too, which had tipped off the hives slightly)  Normally, bees do not die
of cold during winter around here; however, this year we had three nasty
consecutive days of deep freeze, with the day time record-breaking
temperature of 15 F.  Reminding me of my childhood Siberian freeze in
Korea, the arctic blast felt as though we were walking right into a deep
freezer.  The bees, despite abundant stores around them, failed to re-
cluster or move about, having been immobilized by this sudden and rare
arctic blast—-which often dips all the way down to Galveston, Texas,
unimpeded, due to the lack of any mountain range.

Normally we have at least one day, if not more, of flight per week during
winter.  In fact, overall this last winter had been warmer than usual,
making me worry, in midway in the winter, about the bees’ consuming more
store than otherwise.  I had to open-feed some.  Summer heat is nasty
around here: it can easily boil around and above 100 F, which makes
extracting hot yet easy.  To assist my bees against the chill and the
heat, I now place one-inch thick insulation foam atop each hive, above the
outer-cover, weighed down by a square leaf of cement block, thinking that
just like our house, the roof probably needs a better R-value.  No, I do
not have any facts to back up but just my thinking.  (Can someone shoot
the hives at night with an infrared camera?)  I gave SBB to strong
colonies only—-for I saw many bees, on traditional bottoms, blocking the
entrance to cut down the night draft and chill.  It is a bit too early for
most of them to be on SBB while rearing brood.  One of the best ways to
gauge whether the bees need better ventilation is to visit them at night.
A well-ventilated colony will seldom make swarmy bee-beard.

Yoon

Shawnee, OK

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