Tag Archives: overwintering survival

Cut your losses

The stats for winter losses in the UK, Europe and USA can make for rather sobering reading.

In the UK, losses over the last 12 years have fluctuated between 9% and 34%. This self-selecting survey includes responses from about 10% of the British Beekeepers Association membership (primarily England and Wales, despite the name). The average number of hives maintained by a BBKA member is about 5, meaning – all other things being equal 1 – that most beekeepers should expect to lose about 1 hive every winter.

BBKA winter losses survey

About 30 countries, mainly Northern hemisphere, contribute to the COLOSS survey which is significantly larger scale. The most recent 2 data published (for the ’16/’17 winter) had data from ~15,000 respondents 3 managing over 400,000 hives. Of these, ~21% were lost for a variety of reasons. COLOSS data is presented as an unwieldy table, rather than graphically. Further details, including recently published results, are linked from their website.

In the USA the Bee Informed Partnership surveys losses – both winter and summer – and claims to have results that cover ~10% of all the colonies in the country (so probably between 250,000 and 275,000 hives). Winter losses in the USA are rarely reported at less than 20% and were as high as 35% in the ’18/’19 winter 4.

Bee Informed Partnership annual colony losses

Are these figures to be trusted?

Who knows?

Each survey is accompanied by a variety of statistics. However, since they all appear to be based upon voluntary reporting by a subset of beekeepers, there are opportunities for all sorts of data to be included (and even more to be missed entirely). 

The problem with surveys

Is the successful beekeeper who managed to get all her colonies through the winter more likely to respond?

A form of ‘bragging rights’.

What about the beekeeper that lost all his colonies?

Does he respond out of a sense of responsibility?

Or does he keep quiet because he doesn’t want to be reminded of those cold, quiet, mouldy boxes opened on the first warm day of spring?

One and two year beekeepers

What about the high level of annual ‘churn’ amongst beekeepers? They buy a nuc in May, filled with enthusiasm about the jars of golden honey they’ll have for family and friends in late summer.

To say nothing of all the “saving the bees” they’ll be doing.

But by late summer the colony is queenless and has an unpleasant temperament

Beekeeping should be enjoyable ...

Beekeeping should be enjoyable …

Psychopathic you might say … if you were feeling uncharitable.

Consequently the Varroa treatment goes on far too late,. Or is quietly forgotten. The winter bees have high viral loads and ‘die like flies’ 5, resulting in the colony succumbing by the year end.

But this colony loss is never recorded on any surveys.

The once enthusiastic beekeeper has moved on and is now passionate about growing prize-winning vegetables or cheesemaking or keeping chickens. 

Beekeeping associations train lots of new beekeepers and – although membership numbers are increasing – it’s well below the rate they’re trained at.

Some may not be ‘joiners’ and go their own way.

Many just quietly stop after a year or two.

How many people have you met that say “Oh yes, I used to keep bees”

Did you ask them whether they ever completed a winter losses survey?

I’m not sure any of the surveys listed above do much ‘groundtruthing’ to establish whether the data they collect is truly representative of the population actually surveyed. With large numbers of respondents spread across a wide geographic and climatic range it’s not an easy thing to do.

So, treat these surveys with a healthy degree of scepticism.

Undoubtedly there are high levels of winter losses – at least sometimes – and the overall level of losses varies from year to year.

Losses and costs

The direct financial cost of these colony losses to beekeepers is very high.

Ignoring time invested and ‘consumables’ like food, miticides and foundation these costs in ’16/’17 for just Austria, the Czech Republic and Macedonia were estimated at €56 million 😯  

These figures simply reflect lost honey production and the value of the lost colonies. They do not include the indirect costs resulting from lost pollination.

But, for the small scale beekeeper, these economic losses are irrelevant.

Most of these beekeepers do not rely on bees for their income.

The real cost is emotional 🙁

It still saddens me when I lose a colony, particularly when I think that the loss was avoidable or due to my incompetence, carelessness or stupidity 6.

Little snow, big snow. Big snow, little snow.

Your hives should be quiet in winter, but it hurts when they are silent in spring.

Anatomy of a death

The COLOSS surveys give a breakdown of winter losses in three categories:

  • natural disasters
  • queen problems
  • dead colonies

Natural disasters are things like bears, honey badgers, flooding or falling trees.

We can probably safely ignore honey badgers in the UK, but climate change is increasing the weather extremes that causes flooding and falling trees.

Moving to higher ground ...

Moving to higher ground …

Don’t assume that poly hives are the answer to potential flooding.

They do float, though not necessarily the right way up 🙁

Queen problems cover a variety of issues ranging from reduced fecundity to poor mating (and consequent drone laying) to very early or late – and failed – supersedure 7.

Beekeepers with a lot more experience than me report that queen problems are increasing.

Drone laying queen ...

Drone laying queen …

Perhaps the issues with fecundity and drone laying are related to toxic levels of miticides in commercial foundation? It’s certainly known that these residues reduce drone sperm fertility significantly. I intend to return to this topic sometime during the approaching winter … perhaps in time to encourage the use of some foundationless frames for (fertile) drone production 😉

In the ’16/’17 COLOSS data, natural disasters accounted for 1.6% of all overwintered colonies (so ~7.5% of losses), queen problems resulted in the loss of 5.1% of colonies (i.e. ~24% of losses) and the remainder (14.1% of colonies, ~68% of losses) just died.

Just died?

We’ll return to natural disasters (but not bears or honey badgers) and queen problems shortly. What about the majority of losses in which the colony ‘just died’?

If you discuss colony post-mortems with beekeepers they sometimes divide the ‘just died’ category (i.e. those not readily attributable to failed queens, marauding grizzlies or tsunamis) into four groups:

  • disease
  • isolation starvation
  • starvation
  • don’t know 

The most important disease associated with overwintering colony losses is high levels of Deformed wing virus (DWV). This results from uncontrolled or inadequately controlled Varroa infestation. For any new readers of this site, please refer back to many of the articles I’ve already written on Varroa management 8.

I strongly suspect that a significant proportion of the reported isolation starvation is actually also due to disease, rather than isolation per se.

A consequence of high levels of DWV is that winter bees die prematurely. Consequently, the colony shrinks faster than it would otherwise do. It starts the size of a basketball but (too) rapidly ends up the size of a grapefruit … or an orange.

Isolation starvation and disease

The small cluster is then unable to remain in contact with stores, and so starves. 

Yes, the colony died from ‘isolation starvation’, but the cause was the high levels of Varroa and the viruses it transmits.

Isolation starvation ...

Isolation starvation …

What about regular starvation?

Not because the cluster became isolated from the stores, but simply because they had insufficient stores to get through the winter.

Whose fault was that?

And the last category, the “don’t knows”?

I bet most of these are due to high levels of Varroa and DWV as well 🙁

Yes, there will be other reasons … but probably not a huge number. 

What’s more … if you don’t know the reason for the colony loss there’s very little you can do to mitigate against it in future seasons.

And, other than wild and increasingly vague speculation, there’s little I can write about if the reason for the loss remains unknown 9.

Avoiding winter losses

So, let’s rationalise those earlier lists into the probable (known) major causes of overwintering colony losses:

  • natural disasters
  • queen problems
  • starvation
  • disease (but probably mainly DWV and Varroa

As the long, hot days of summer gradually shorten and cool as early autumn approaches, you should be thinking about each of these potential causes of overwintering colony loss … and doing what you can to ensure it doesn’t happen to you (or, more correctly, your bees).

Ardnamurchan autumn

Ardnamurchan autumn

Some are easier to deal with than others.

Here’s a whistle-stop tour of some more specific problems and some practical solutions 10. Some, all or none may apply to your bees – it depends upon your location, your climate, your experience and future plans as a beekeeper. 

Natural disasters

These fall into two broad groups:

  • things you can do almost nothing about (but might be able to avoid)
  • things you can relatively easily solve

Flooding, falling trees, lightning, landslides, earthquakes, volcanoes, meteor strikes etc. all fall into the first group.

If you can avoid them, do. 

Your local council will have information on areas at risk from flooding. There are also searchable maps available from SEPA. Do not underestimate the severity of some of the recent flooding. Some parts of Scotland and Northern England had 600 mm of rain in two days in 2015.

You might be surprised (and from an insurance aspect, devastated) at the classification of some areas now ‘at risk’. 

Where did Noah keep his bees? In his Ark hive.

Where did Noah keep his bees? In his Ark hive.

Consider moving hives to higher ground before the winter rains start. One consequence of climate change is that heavy rainfall is now ~20% heavier than it was a few decades ago. This means that floods occur more frequently, are more extensive and the water levels rise faster. You might not have a chance to move the hives if flooding does occur,

More rain and stronger winds (particularly before leaf fall) mean more trees will come down. You might be able to identify trees potentially at risk from falling. It makes sense to remove them (or site your hives elsewhere). 

No risk of this larch tree falling on my hives

Lightning, earthquakes, volcanoes, meteor strikes … all a possibility though I would 11 probably worry about Varroa and woodpeckers first 😉

Solvable natural disasters

The ‘solvable’ natural disasters include preventing your colonies being robbed by other bees or wasps. Or ransacked by mice or woodpeckers after the first hard frosts start. A solution to many of these are ‘reduced size entrances’ which either enable the colony to better defend itself, or physically restricts access to critters.

The L-shaped ‘kewl floors‘ I use prevent mice from accessing the brood box. They are also easier for the colony to defend from bees/wasps, but can also easily be reduced in size with a narrow piece of hardwood. If you don’t use these types of floor you should probably use a mouseguard.

Polyhives and polythene

Polyhives and polythene …

Woodpeckers 12 need to cling onto the outside of the hive to hammer their way through the side. You can either place a wire mesh cage around the hive, or wrap the box in something like damp proof membrane (or polythene) to prevent them gaining purchase on the side walls.

Keep off Woody

Keep off Woody

Doing both is probably overkill though 😉

Strong colonies

Before we move onto queen problems – though it is related – it’s worth emphasising that an even better solution to prevent robbing by bees or wasps is to maintain really strong colonies.

Strong colonies with a well balanced population of bees can almost always defend themselves successfully against wasps and robbing bees.

Nucs, that are both weaker and – at least shortly after being made up – unbalanced, are far less able to defend themselves and need some sort of access restriction.

By ‘balanced’ I mean that the numbers and proportions of bees fulfilling the various roles in the nucleus colony are reflective of a full hive e.g. nurse bees, foragers, guard bees. 

Reduced entrance ...

Reduced entrance …

But the benefits of strong colonies are far greater than just being able to prevent wasps or robbing bees. There is compelling scientific evidence that strong colonies overwinter better

I don’t mean strong summer colonies, I mean colonies that are strong in the late autumn when they are fully populated with the winter bees.

Almost the entire complement of bees in the hive are replaced between late summer and late autumn. Remember that a really strong summer colony may not be strong in the winter if Varroa and virus levels have not been controlled.

How do you ensure your colonies are strong?

  1. Minimise disease by controlling Varroa levels in early autumn to guarantee the all-important winter bees are reared without being exposed to high levels of DWV.
  2. Try and use a miticide treatment that does not reduce the laying rate of the queen.
  3. Avoid blocking the brood nest with stores where the queen should be laying eggs.
  4. Requeen your colonies regularly. Young queens lay more eggs later into the autumn. As a consequence the colonies have increased populations of winter bees.
  5. Unite weak colonies (assuming they are disease-free) with stronger colonies. The former may well not survive anyway, and the latter will have a better chance of surviving if it is even stronger – see below. 
  6. Use local bees. There’s good evidence that local bees (i.e. reared locally, not imported from elsewhere) overwinter better, not least because they produce stronger colonies.

Uniting – take your losses in the autumn

My regular colony inspections every 7-10 days during May and June are pretty much abandoned by July. The risk of swarming is very much reduced after the ‘June gap’ in my experience. 

I still check the colonies periodically and I’m usually still rearing queens. However, the rigour with which I check for queen cells is much reduced. By July my colonies are usually committed to single-mindedly filling the supers with summer nectar.

They are already making their own preparations for the long winter ahead.

Although the inspections are less rigorous, I do keep a careful watch on the strength of each colony. Often this is directly related to the number of supers I’ve had to pile on top.

Colonies that are underperforming, and – more specifically – understrength are almost always united with a stronger colony.

An Abelo/Swienty hybrid hive ...

An Abelo/Swienty hybrid hive …

Experience has taught me that an understrength colony is usually more trouble than it’s worth. If it’s disease-free it may well overwinter reasonably well. However, it’s likely to start brood rearing more slowly and build up less well. It may also need more mollycoddling 13 in the autumn e.g. protection from wasps or robbing bees.

However, a colony that is not flourishing in the summer is much more likely to struggle and fail during the winter. Perhaps the queen is not quite ‘firing on all cylinders’ and laying at a really good rate, or she might be poorly mated.

Far better that the workforce contributes to strengthening another hive, rather than collect an underwhelming amount of honey before entering the winter and eventually becoming a statistic.

My winter losses are low and, over the last decade, reducing.

That’s partly because my Varroa management is reasonably thorough.

However, it’s probably mainly due to ensuring only strong colonies go into the winter in the first place.

Newspaper

I’ve dealt with uniting in several previous posts.

It’s a two minute job. 

You remove the queen from the weak colony, stack one brood box over the other separated by a sheet or two of newspaper with a very small (~3mm) hole in the middle. Add the roof and leave them to get on with things.

I don’t think it makes any difference whether the strong colony goes on the top or the bottom.

I place the colony I’m moving above the box I’m uniting it with. My – wildly unscientific – rationale being that the bees in the top box will have to negotiate the route to the hive entrance and, in doing so, will help them orientate to the new location faster 14.

If you unite colonies early or late in the day most foragers will be ‘at home’ so not too many bees will return to find their hive missing.

If there are supers on one or both hives you can separate them with newspaper as well. Alternatively, use a clearer the day before to empty the supers prior to uniting the colonies. You can then add back the supers you want and redistribute the remainder to other hives in the apiary.

Successful uniting ...

Successful uniting …

Don’t be in too much of a hurry to check for successful uniting.

Leave them a week. The last thing you want is for the queen to get killed in an unseemly melee caused by you disturbing them before they have properly settled.

Done properly, uniting is almost foolproof. I reckon over 95% of colonies I unite are successful.

That’s all folks … more on ‘Cutting your losses’ next week 🙂


Notes

At just over 3000 words this post got a bit out of control … I’ll deal with more significant queen problems, feeding colonies, the weather and some miscellaneous ‘odds and sods’ next week.

Strong hives = live hives

Science and beekeeping make for interesting contrasts and can be awkward bedfellows 1.

Science is based upon observation of tested single variables. multiple repeats and statistical analysis. It builds on what has gone before but has accepted processes to challenge well-established theories. Some of the greatest advances are made by young researchers willing to test – and subsequently overturn – established dogma.

Over the last three generations science – both how we do it and what we understand – has changed almost beyond recognition.

In contrast, beekeeping is steeped in history, has multiple variables – climate, forage, ability – and very small sample sizes. It tends to be taught by the most experienced, passing down established – though often not rigorously tested 🙁 – methods 2.

As a consequence our beekeeping has barely changed over the last three decades. Established dogma tends to stay established.

Local bees are better adapted to local conditions

So let’s look in a little more detail at one of these established ‘facts’ … that locally reared bees are better adapted to local conditions.

The suggestion here is that locally reared bees, because they’re ‘better adapted’ (whatever that means) are more likely to flourish when the going is good, and more likely to survive when the going gets tough.

Furthermore, the implication is that they’re more likely to do better in that environment than bees reared elsewhere (and that are therefore adapted to a different environment).

This sounds like common sense.

Locally bred queen ...

Locally bred queen …

As Brexit looms and the never-ending supply of early-season Greek or Slovenian queens disappears perhaps it’s also fortunate, rather than just being common sense.

But, as a scientist, I’ve spent a career questioning things.

Every time I read the “locally adapted bees survive better (or perform better, or whatever better)” 3 two questions pop into my head …

  1. What’s local?
  2. How did they prove – or how would I test – this?

Spoiler alert

There is evidence that local bees show adaptive changes to their local environment. There is also evidence that local bees do better in their local environment.

Formally, I don’t think scientists have demonstrated that the former explains the latter. This might seem trivial, but it does mean that our understanding is still incomplete.

However, I’m not going to discuss any of these things today – but I will in the future.

Instead I’m going to deal with those two questions that pop into my head.

If we tackle those I think we’ll be better placed to address that dogmatic statement that local bees are better adapted to local conditions in due course.

But perhaps we’ll first discover that other things are more important?

What’s local?

I live most of the time in central Fife. It’s a reasonably dry, relatively cool, largely arable part of the UK with a beekeeping season that lasts about 5 months (from first to last inspections).

Are my (fabulous 😉 ) locally bred queens adapted for central Fife, or the east of Scotland, or perhaps north-west maritime Europe, or Europe?

Where have all my young girls gone?

What a beauty

Would these locally adapted bees do better here (in Fife) than bees raised in the foothills of the Cairngorms, or the Midlands, or Devon or East Anglia … or Portugal?

If you measure the environment you’ll find there’s significant overlap in terms of the climate, the temperature, the forage, the day length (or a hundred other determinants) with other regions of the UK.

The temperature or rainfall extremes we experience in central Fife aren’t significantly different to those in the Midlands. The season duration is different (because of latitude), but I had lots of short seasons in the Midlands due to cool springs and early autumns.

Local is an ill-defined and subjective term.

But there are differences of course. Are Ardnamurchan bees better able to cope with the rain (and the fantastic scenery) than Fife bees? Are Fife bees better able to exploit arable crops than those foraging on the heather and Atlantic rainforests that cloak the hills in the far west of Scotland?

I don’t know 🙁

And there’s something else I don’t know

I also don’t know how I would meaningfully test this.

Just thinking about these types of experiments makes me nervous. Think of the year to year variation – in weather, forage etc. – compounded by the hive to hive variation.

Then multiply that by the variation between beekeepers.

This last one is a biggy. Two beekeepers of differing abilities will experience very different levels of success – quantified in terms of honey yield or hives that survive for example – in the same season and environment.

Doing a study large enough to be statistically relevant without having such enormous variation that the results are essentially meaningless is tricky.

What a nightmare.

Which, in a roundabout way, brings me to a paper earlier this year by Maryann Frazier and Christina Grozinger from Penn State University.

Ask the question in a different way

The title of the paper tells you most of what you need to know about the study.

Colony size, rather than geographic origin of stocks, predicts overwintering success in honey bees (Hymenoptera: Apidae) in the northeastern United States. 4

But don’t stop reading … let’s look in a bit more detail at what they did.

They approached the question (that local bees are better adapted) from a slightly different angle.

Essentially the question they asked was “Does the geographic origin of the bees influence the overwintering survival of bees in a temperate region?”

This question is easier to answer.

They defined the parameters of the experiment a bit more clearly. For example:

  • Rather than looking at several regions they just studied bees in one area  – Pennsylvania (the temperate region in the title of the paper).
  • The bees came from four sources; two were from a hot geographic region of the USA and two from a cold region.
  • They scored ‘doing better’ only in terms of overwintering survival.

By simplifying the question they could reduce some of the variables. They could therefore increase the quantification of the parameters (colony weight, strength/size etc.) that might influence the ‘doing better’.

And in doing so, they came up with an answer.

The study

Sixty colonies were established in three apiaries in Pennsylvania. Two of the apiaries (A & B) were within 1 mile of each other, with the third (C) about 15 miles away. Colonies were generally established from packages 5, to which a queen was introduced from one of four different queen breeders.

Two of the queen breeders were from southern USA (Texas or Florida) and two from northern USA (Vermont and West Virginia 6.

The authors used microsatellite analysis to confirm that the queens – after introduction – headed genetically distinct colonies by midsummer 7.

So far, so good …

They then used standard beekeeping methods to manage the colonies – regular inspections, Varroa treatments as appropriate, feeding them up for winter etc.

They scored colonies for a variety of ‘parameters’; net weight, frames of brood, adult bees and stores.

Four queens failed before winter.

And then they overwintered the remaining 56 colonies …

The results

… of which only 39 survived until April 🙁

39/56 sounds a pretty catastrophic loss to me but it’s actually about the same (~30%) as the average winter losses reported each year in the USA.

So, did the ‘cold-adapted’ 8 Vermont queens survive and prosper? Did the ‘Southern Belles’ 9 from Texas all perish in the cold Pennsylvanian winter?

No.

That’s no to both questions.

There was no significant difference in survival of colonies headed by queens from the north or the south.

The geographic ‘origin’ of the bees did not determine colony survival.

They may have been ‘locally adapted’ (to Vermont, or Texas or wherever) and they were certainly genetically distinct, but it made no difference to whether the colony perished or not in Pennsylvania.

So if the source of the queen didn’t influence things, what did?

Weighty matters

This is the key figure from the paper.

Overwintering success is significantly associated with colony weight.

The heavier a colony was in October, the more likely that the colony survived until April.

The left hand panel shows the probability of a colony surviving (vertical axis, solid line) plotted against the net weight of the colony.

Below about 30 kg colony survival dropped significantly.

The right hand panel shows that net weight alone was not the only determinant. This plots colonies ranked by weight (vertical axis) and indicates whether they survived or not. An underweight (i.e. under 30 kg) colony in apiary C was much more likely to survive than a similar weight colony from the other two apiaries.

Allee, Allee 10

The heavier the colony, the greater the chance it survived. Furthermore, it wasn’t simply the amount of stores available.

Heavier colonies were also larger colonies.

This indicates a so-called Allee effect 11 which is a positive correlation between population density and individual fitness.

This has been shown before for honey bees (and other social insects). For bees we know that the larger the winter cluster the better they are able to maintain the correct overwintering temperature. These large clusters show lower per capita honey consumption to maintain the same temperature when compared to small clusters.

However, in addition to not running out of stores (due to more frugal usage) 12, large colonies will also be better able to rear brood in early spring … ‘it takes bees to make bees’.

Taken together these results demonstrate that colony size and weight, rather than geographic adaptation, is probably the most important determinant of overwintering colony survival.

Disease interlude

These studies were conducted in 2013 (and published in 2019 … a feature of some of my science 🙁 ). In the previous year the authors set up a similar study but did not manage Varroa levels.

Under these conditions only 12% of the colonies survived.

There’s a lesson there I think 😉

This disastrous 2012 study used the same queen breeders to source their queens (from Texas, Florida, West Virgina and Vermont). Some of these queens were described and sold as ‘Varroa-resistant’.

There was no difference in survival (or, more accurately, death) rates between colonies headed by queens described as ‘Varroa-resistant’ or not.

Another lesson perhaps?

Is there a geographic component to Varroa-resistance? Are Varroa-resistant Vermont colonies only actually resistant to mites from Vermont?

Or their viruses? 13

OK, we’re getting distracted … let’s return to apiary C.

Forage diversity and abundance is also important

Colonies in apiary C survived better at lower overall net weights than colonies from other apiaries. In addition, average colony weights were higher in apiary C than in the other two apiaries.

Apiary location significantly affected colony weight and survival.

And the abundance and range of nectar sources was significantly different between the three apiaries used in this study, with colonies from apiary C – located in a less forested and more agricultural area – surviving better.

The proportion of land cover/land use types surrounding apiaries.

The authors suggest that the forage diversity and abundance around apiary C increased the size of the colonies (by boosting brood rearing, adult longevity and colony growth) and that it was this larger adult population, rather than colony weight per se, that was important.

Are we getting the message?

This is the second time in a month that I’ve discussed the importance of strong colonies.

A few weeks ago I discussed how strong colonies are more profitable because they generate a surplus of honey or bees, both of which are valuable.

In this post I show that the primary determinant of overwintering success is the strength and weight of the colony. The source of the queen – whether from the balmy south or the frosty north – had no significant influence on colony survival.

This doesn’t mean local bees aren’t better adapted to local conditions. That wasn’t what was being tested.

However, it does suggest that other things that may be as important, or perhaps more important.

The take home message from this study is keep strong colonies in a forage-rich environment.

In a future post I’ll discuss the evidence that local bees are better adapted … and I’ll make the suggestion that some of these adaptations might be explained because the local genotype actually produces stronger colonies 😉


Note

This was originally published with the title Correlates of winter survival on 8/11/2019 but a hamster running amok in the server meant that the email to those registered to receive announcements of new posts was never sent. Rather than let the post disappear into digital oblivion – as the take home message is an important one – I’m re-posting it again.

With apologies to those who read the original …