Early in survey no place to explain that I was valuably helped by taking a bee class.
RESPONSE – You added into comments at end and that was good. We do have class by an association and by bee supply or garden store as possible answers. When not sure we can get this information in comments as you have done. Thanks for sharing.
There is no selection in mite control for none as an answer it assumes all do mite control and I do not.
RESPONSE – We have a none for non-chemical treatment controls. Then a screen did you use a control – clicking none takes you past the specific controls to section 9 on queens. We do have another for all multiple answer choices and you can put none in there.
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My bees are in a hard to feed area and I do well except in wintering. This year I moved them in to their bee house and failed to connect the entrance I invented with nosema and blocking the hive entrance. When I realized my mistake my hives were doomed to fail. Mostly my fault I should have 6 strong hives right now. I lost two hives in late September 15 airplane spray of some type then seven in January 16 I think five I killed with my invention 2 hard cold killed, I lost 2 in February march 16 hard cold snap week hive but one with brood and 3 frames of bees just died I think it should have made it.
Response – The main thing is to learn from the mistake – you had a good idea but it didn’t quite work out as intended. The losses you describe are too common for our area however so maybe it wasn’t just your management (or lack thereof) that was the issue. I trust this season will be different – at least the chance to make a different mistake with the bees.
Posted in 2016 Survey, Q & A
Tagged colony loss, Feeding, mite control, nosema, survey confusion
The second swarm we caught was *tiny* so we did not expect it to survive winter, but thought we would give it a chance. Not sure that it should really count in statistics? Also, I think you might have a typo in section 3. It asks for how many colonies we had going into fall 2014, coming out in 2015. Shouldn’t that be 2015/2016? Thanks for doing this!
RESPONSE: First question of section 3 asks how many overwinter colonies from 2014 (so it was a colony overwintered in fall of 2015, i.e. not a nuc or package started in 2015) survived until 2016. It is an awkward wording so we will make it better for next survey year survey. A tiny or large swarm – we are not discriminating on basis of size.
Question relating to how we obtained bees did not provide an option for buying a hive from another bee keeper (it wasn’t a package or a Nuc). Thank you for your interest in bee keeping.
RESPONSE Question 4 has several options for your response – including the last line other – you could have entered your data on that line.
I don’t understand the sanitation question (maybe the 3rd or 4th)
RESPONSE: thank you for your comment. Apiary site selection means we can reduce drifting and help our bees stay in their proper hives by how we site our hives in the apiary. I am working on further explanation to help better explain – I think we do too little on basic sanitation with our bees and that makes mites stronger and more of an issue in our high colony losses.
I do use screened bottom boards but for the screen portion and always the bottom in place. The question Sec. 6b “Do you use screened bottom boards assumes that the screens are open some or all year” my response does not fit the options.
RESPONSE: So if unsure how to respond leave the question blank and put a comment like this under the comments. It sounds like the responses are YES use screen bottom boards but No do not leave them open.