>The other thing is, lots of beekeepers don’t experience real winter, so there aren’t strictly speaking winter losses, but they are constantly losing colonies. But they are also making new ones as fast as the old fizzle, which makes it impossible to put a number on the rate of loss, if you include the colonies created.

Agree.  I have to say that I am finding it very difficult to define a winter loss; many colonies that die out in winter seem to do so because of something that happened during the previous spring, summer or autumn.

Often those losses are very predictable.  The winter of 2012-13 was an excellent example of this here in the UK: poor spring with poor mating, extremely wet summer with colonies not building, wet autumn with virtually no pollen coming in.  The 'winter' losses that then occurred were nothing to do with the winter and were expected.

Best wishes

Peter
52°14'44.44"N, 1°50'35"W

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