Russian-Bear Winters And Dead-Bee Springs

Last winter was a bear. A hulking, lumbering, Russian snow bear. It was freezing cold from early January through mid April. Brutal. A friend of ours lost all 32 of his beehives. Miraculously, we lost only one of ours, and that one was iffy going into winter, so no big surprise there.What’s really impressive, however, is not that we managed to get our bees through the worst Long Island winter in recent memory, but that we managed to then kill one of those tough, resilient hives after the worst was over and with spring in the air.

Anybody can lose a hive when temperatures hover near freezing for weeks on end; it takes a special gift to get through that particular circle of hell and then kill them with the finish line in sight.

Allow me to explain. Two of our hives were in pretty good shape going into winter. By Labor Day, we had drawn off about a gallon of honey—embarrassing by any beekeeping standard, but since we started the season with two new hives and one that barely made it through the previous winter, we were happy.

Then disaster struck. The hives seemed unusually hectic, but we figured it was just a late-season shopping spree as the girls rushed to gather the last of the nectar and pollen before winter. Turns out it was a shopping spree, but the shopping was going on IN the hives, not in the garden. Bees from other colonies had stormed the battlements and were stealing our girls’ hard-earned honey. Being the novice beekeepers we are, we didn’t catch it right away, so by the time we rode to the rescue, one hive was nearly picked clean and the residents of all three hives were fighting to drive the intruders away. I had noticed what appeared to be honeybee wrestling matches going on at the hive door, but how could I know this was a life and death battle, not just a new hobby they had picked up?

We barred the doors so our girls could get things under control, moved some honey-filled frames into the worst-hit hive, and started feeding everybody organic sugar water so they could restock the pantry for winter. Hundreds of dollars later, we bid them happy winter and hoped for the best.

After months of frigid temperatures, by mid-March we were getting nervous. There was still snow on the ground, nothing was even thinking of blooming, and we were afraid that our girls would run out of provisions. So we waited until a relatively warm day, removed the hive covers, and placed a tasty pollen patty in each one. A slab of sugar, soy flour and brewer’s yeast, pollen patties are designed to tide the bees over and get them geared up for spring. We were quick, we were efficient; frankly we impressed ourselves with what good beekeepers we were.

Fast forward to mid-April, when the first of the spring bulbs worked their way up through the last of the snow. Happy honeybees poured out of hive No. 1 like kids hitting the playground after school. At hive No. 2, nothing. We peeked in to find a bee ghost town. There was wailing and gnashing of teeth. There was most certainly swearing, especially when we found that the bees had plenty of food and didn’t even need the pollen patty.

Bonac Bees’ Deb Klughers told me later that an old beekeeper had told her he never opens his hives early in the spring because you risk chilling the hive and killing the queen. He makes a good point. Too bad I didn’t get the memo in time.

As part of our plan to make every mistake possible in this beekeeping endeavor, I suppose we must consider this mass bee murder a success. I’m guessing the bees would hold a different opinion.