The word for the hive update this spring is ‘mixed’. We had a 30% loss, which is our highest loss ever. Unfortunately, the hives in our overwintering room did not do well. The health of these hives was already challenged going into the winter and with the cool weather in March, we left our bees in for an extra two weeks, which probably did not help. However, our outdoor hives, which were our best hives going into the winter, did well. Some of our weaker hives perished in March and some in May, but by the end of May, any weaker hives that survived began to thrive.
This spring, we also purchased 64 colonies, from Munro Apiaries, for Ph.D. candidate, Wissarut Sukhaket’s, study on Nosema disease. We took splits from the colonies using an interesting method to ensure uniform genetics and parasite and Nosema load. We shook bees from two brood frame splits into a screened bulk bee box. We then measured out 6 cups of bees for each split. The split got their original queens and the original colonies got queen cells.
The splits went well and we now have more colonies than ever, coming to a total of 380!
