The losses to bees in wintering are severe, ranging for the United States as a whole from 10 to almost 15 per cent, and rising in some States to almost 50 per cent in the winter of 1916-17. The losses for the winter of 1917-18, owing to an early and exceedingly severe winter, are reported at 18.7 per cent, more than a half greater than the average of the three preceding winters, and the heaviest in a long period of years.  

The principal causes of winter loss, as reported, being in order: starvation, cold, queenlessness, weakened condition resulting from disease or poor honey, such as late unripened aster for the winter food supply, a small cluster of bees due to late swarming or other causes, and lack of young bees from any cause but due usually to a failing queen or an unfavorable autumn for brood rearing.  

The losses unquestionably considerably understate the average loss, because they represent in the main the experience of the better beekeepers. Those who keep bees housed in kegs, thin store boxes, sections of hollow logs (gums), and similar receptacles, giving them no attention beyond "robbing" them annually of their honey, often at the most inopportune time for the bees, leaving no reserve of food to carry the colony through periods of summer drought and winter cold, and lacking knowledge of the nature and cure of the diseases and other ills that occasionally afflict bees, are naturally the ones to suffer the most severe losses, and such keepers are not as a rule among those whose reports are included in these tables. 

Source:
HONEYBEES AND HONEY PRODUCTION IN THE UNITED STATES.
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
BULLETIN No. 685 (1918)

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