The Buzz Newsletter

March 2007

 

 

Page 7

THE BEEYARD REPORT

It’s February 13th. It’s below zero. A nasty wind is blowing. I don’t even want to know what the wind chill is. Snow is everywhere. I don’t think this bodes well for the bees. Cold weather doesn’t kill healthy bees. It will kill bees that have been under stress. A lot of mine were under stress in the fall and early winter. This gives me a lot of anxiety about high winter losses. I looked in my yard notes from last spring. We were looking at the bees on Feb 2 last year. I had a pretty good idea where I was at by the end of February. That won’t be happening this year.

It’s hard to plan when you don’t know what is going to happen. We have ordered fewer queens this year since I think death loss is going to be high. We have also set aside packages for us. I do this every year but we haven’t had to use any since the spring of 2000. We have set aside more than normal this year. If the bees somehow come through, we’ll sell off some of the packages.

There are some horror stories coming out of California and the Southeast. One of them was that Dave Hackenberg had lost 9000 colonies of bees. I didn’t give much credence to that one. I knew he didn’t have that many. It turned out to be 1900 which is about 2/3 of his operation. Occurrences like this have been documented in 22 states. They are calling it CCD--Colony Collapse Disorder. Nobody really knows what is happening. Whole yards collapse. I feel like Varroa is at the root of this but that’s just my opinion.

I saw a story on Nightline about the disappearing orange groves in Florida. The acreage in orange groves has declined 30% during the last 10 years. Most of this ground is being developed. In some cases it is selling as high as $15,000/acre. Orange trees are also being attached by some exotic pests. It reminded me of the honeybee problems. The population of Florida is going to continue to explode. We can’t put off development but I wonder how we maintain balance. We are going to see a lot of acres come out of CRP in our area as the demand for corn acres increase. If all of the ethanol plants on the books come to completion, I don’t think there is enough corn to go around. It was pointed out to me that someone like Cargill will probably come in at that point and buy up the failing plants for 30 cents on the dollar.

Most of my excess honey is sold but I am holding back more than normal in case my bee losses are catastrophic. We have to be able to take care of our stores. There is still work to do but this time of year I get to quit when I feel like it. We still have some equipment left to repair and booking package bees seems to take up quite a bit of time. One winter project has been remodeling the kitchen. I had thought about it for years but never got around to it. I decided I needed help if it was ever going to happen. I have a neighbor who is good carpenter. He put the cabinets in. The big corner cabinet wouldn’t fit through the back door. We had to take out the kitchen window to get it inside. We were going to replace the window anyway but hadn’t planned to do it on a day when the temperature was zero.

Let’s hope for a positive end to winter and THINK SPRING!!!!!!

Submitted by Phil Ebert