Dead out - I spoke too soon 😞

And this is beekeeping! The highs of joy to the doldrums of despair!

It's taken me a week to be able to write this post. I have been blind sided by the loss of my bees. They were my friends, my confidantes, and they gave me joy. Before a beekeeping meeting in Oxford, my guilt levels were considerably high. Was I a bad beekeeper? Did I do something wrong? Did I neglect to feed my bees on time? ( I only feed my bees when I believe it is absolutely necessary and with honey from the same apiary, not processed sugar. Even though there are many sources suggesting that sugar is ok for the bees, I am not convinced. Would you rather eat a healthy, nutritious meal (honey) or a doughnut (sugar)? As a mother, the healthy meal option trumps every time.

So what actually happened??? After the triumph and ecstasy of seeing my bees flying, only 10 days later, I noticed a few bees on the landing board in stasis. No disease was apparent, and when warmed, they resurrected. I initially thought that they had been caught in the cold and were frozen outside, as this does happen. In the next few days, I saw more bees frozen, so on a fairly warm day, 10 degrees, I decided to look inside and feed my bees. The hive was quiet with a cluster in the middle frame. The bees were alive, and I saw the Queen moving about from under the cluster - phew I thought, I caught them just in time - however, I did see a conspicuous amount of mould on the frames - not a good sign! I left the hive for another 7 days, hoping and praying that they would eat the honey-based fondant and recover. When I went in again to take a look, I experienced my very first dead out. What a retched feeling to see Mother Nature's bees piled up in the middle of the hive, completely motionless, inert without love. I was sorry I hadn't looked after them properly, hadn't fed them on time, hadn't kept them warm enough, hadn't, hadn't, hadn't........

Gareth John, an incredibly experienced Beekeeper, gave a short presentation on winter losses, as many in our Oxford group were suffering. He detailed that the emotional toll can be palpably felt; however, the bees' dying should be looked at from a different perspective. The prolonged wet weather has wreaked havoc on many colonies that simply can not cope with damp conditions. On average, a colony will expel through breathing 10 litres of water during the winter - they need to get that out of the colony before it settles in damp corners. One means is tipping the hive ever so slightly forward to help the water run out to the hive entrance; another is scoring the insides of the hive, similar to inside a tree trunk, which forces the water to go down and out instead of settling inside. Another perspective is that the colony were simply not strong enough and was bound to die. As a beekeeper, it is our duty to foster strong, varroa resistant and native AMM colonies that are gentically wired to deal with the variable weather conditions in the UK. Due to the sometimes prolific buying of Queens from Europe who are not genetically disposed to our climate - queen failure can happen.

Whats next??? I will be getting the bait hives out ( another blog post) and hope to attract a feral colony into one of my boxes. I have never treated my bees with pesticides - a common practice in the UK and globally due to the Varroa mite. The reason why I have never had an issue with varroa is because I do not greedily take off all the honey to sell, I do not work my little friends so hard they do not have the time to pick varroa off their sisters or brothers. Beeing a Bee Conscious beekeeper and a lover of nature is my path.