# Warm winter and dying bees?



## Usingmyrights (Jan 10, 2011)

At first I was happy for the bees about our warm winter. My thoughts were more time out in the field and less.stuff.dying off that they feed on. I read an article though that said the opposite was true. That people werr losing hives like crazy in AZ IIRC. The reason being is that the bees are eating more because theyre flying more, but there isn't as much to forge on. Then the queens start laying because of the higher temps, but with the lack if forge the brood dies off. Anyone care to offer any experience or insight?


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## 6e (Sep 10, 2005)

Yeah, warm winters with no pollen is really not your friend because they consume all their honey and then starve to death if you don't keep them fed.


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## Usingmyrights (Jan 10, 2011)

We've got pollen like crazy right now though. It's on everything. You can see it piled up on the driveway from the last rain. It's been a week or two, but last time I "checked" the hives they felt heavy. Heavier than before so I'm guessing they've actually added to their stores.


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## 6e (Sep 10, 2005)

I see. You live in FL.  Here where we're at everything is brown and dead. No pollen to speak of except Cedar pollen.


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## thequeensblessing (Mar 30, 2003)

Just because there is a lot of pollen around doesn't mean its anything conducive to good bee health, however, if your hives are heavy with honey still, that's a good thing. 

Have you had any trouble from small hive beetles?


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## Usingmyrights (Jan 10, 2011)

Hive beetles have been pretty bad. I need to put some more beetle traps in. I had problems with varro mites the first year, but havent had problems since. All I did was sprinkle them with powered sugar. I mentioned on another thread that a local keeper is experimenting with genetics to reduce varro populations. It's possible that they got crossed some how and reduced the problems that I was having.


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## kendall j (Mar 30, 2007)

I've nearly lost one of my hives because of the warm December we had. They ate up all their stores had a ton of brood and a cold snap hit. I didn't realize it until just after the cold snap when the hive was light and a bunch of dead brood and bees were being drug out of the hive. I then found they had little honey left and it looks like most of them that died were due to not being able to get to what little food was left during the cold. I've been feeding them since and the hive actually looked pretty good when I checked it last week during some warm days.


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