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Date: | Thu, 20 Mar 2008 16:28:30 -0400 |
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In the far north here (central MN) we routinely see dinks like you describe in spring. this has been
my experience and others for decades.
what is common with these dinks is a large number of dead bees accumulating on the snow
though out the winter and sometimes but not always on the bottom board. with a remaining
cluster of anywhere from a couple of hundred bees to maybe 2 frames or so of bees. most have
queens, some do not and are queenless.
the other common variable sometimes associated with these dinks is heavy poop staining on the
out side box or on the hive wrap and ground around the hives.
obviously we see colder temps here then in MO where Bob is wriiting from.
without speculating on whether this is CCD or not, I'm just saying this is a common spring find
here in the north.
i had record winter losses last spring - this year we have normal losses around 5-8%. we've had 30
plus nights below zero this winter and a long winter since Dec 1st as compared to the last 6 years.
after last winters experience i checked my hives routinely this winter every 3 weeks or so when we
had a warm spell. i had a first wave of losses in december presumably the weak or mite damaged
and this is typical from my experience.
then no more additional losses until march. march losses appeared to be mostly on those
colonies which started laying brood early which was followed by a below zero snap and the cluster
starved out because they did not want to abandon brood and move up or sideways in the stack.
so far I feel blessed to have normal winter losses and a large number of nucs and hives to work
with if it ever warms up beyond the teens to 40s.
i must say that the 44 9 frame russian nucs I wintered had the least number of dead bees on the
ground and they hardly used any feed all winter. this was my first winter with pure russians. they
look like a very tough bee and ideal for my climate.
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