>Personally, I have no qualms about taking the lids off hives in winter. I just question the realism of doing this to hundreds of hives in this region (Penn, NY, Mass, etc). Many yards would be inaccessible, and many hives would be tightly wrapped or packed. 

Or covered with snow drifts, which happen to be the best (and cheapest) winter packing possible.  

Generally, our beekeepers only sample accessible yards to get an idea of what to expect.  With large numbers, like thousands, a hundred or so hives opened more or less at random gives a pretty clear picture.  

Sometimes a whole yard may be essentially dead, though, even if the outfit actually averages at 15% overall loss, so just sampling one yard will not tell the tale.   I've seen that, and Aaron reports something similar.
 
>Then there is the question of what to do. I don't think it's at all wise to feed hives too early, as it may stimulate them to brood up too early. There is a lot to be said for letting them go at their own pace. 

For those of us who are confident that there is enough feed, both honey and pollen, that is the best solution IMO.  I have done that and had some of those colonies swarming from wrapped hives at times when other, more intensively managed hives were needing help. 

I don't take honey of the hives and I leave my hives in three or four standards, so I am confident that the varroa are well-controlled, so that is my intention for most of my hives, but I will peek since my hives are in EPS boxes and are easily accessible at home. 

>Preventing starvation is a different natter, but the weight of the hives can be assessed without opening them up. 

True, but if light, only opening them will tell if the cluster is distant from the remaining feed, and when open, the best possible feed for otherwise good colonies is replacement of outer, unoccupied frames with good brood combs full of honey and pollen.

> Ideally, one would have saved frames of honey, or if there are weak or failed hives, one can steal from them.

Agreed 100%.  Only caveat is to make sure such frames are not contaminated with faeces or AFB.   

What many do not ken is that hives with even a little AFB often are the first to die in winter.  At the early stages of AFB breakdown (a progressive process) where only a few scales are seen, the disease  will  nevertheless kill colonies -- especially hygienic ones -- by forcing them to abort many of the larvae which would have been the winter bees, causing the colony to dwindle in winter to a size that cannot survive the cold.

>Anyway, it's still early to say how bees fared winter up this way, since winter has two more months to go (we can get heavy snows in April)

In recent years much of the loss has been late in the winter or early spring, possibly due to shortened bee lifespans resulting from varroa predation and diseases vectored by both mites.  The presence of miticides in comb does not help either in that regard, as apparently some miticide toxicity to bees is enhanced by colder temperatures. (Dee pointed that out).

I was impressed by Aaron's report.  In my opinion, much of the harm to our colonies is due to our need or desire to remove honey at our convenience.  The process of honey harvesting can either be very damaging or harmless and even beneficial to the colonies, all depending on how and when it is done and how much is left for the bees.  

Also, often necessary treatments and manipulations are delayed due to the need to extract (or inability to do so due to a breakdown or day job) and the bees suffer.  As a result the same beekeepers need to buy bees over and over again, and are forced to rob the bees even closer in order to pay for the next year's replacements.

These days bees are worth more than honey, so to me it only makes sense to take care of the bees first and take honey only where it is truly surplus to the bees' needs or if the beekeeper has proven methods of ensuring the bees are never short of quality feed, even for a few days.  

Being short of feed, even in the short term, changes the entire economy (and some might say psychology) of a colony and alters its behaviour for some time afterwards.  This alteration due to scarcity can be stimulative early in the year, but can prove fatal later on, near winter.

             ***********************************************
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

Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at:
http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm