Spring, Losses, and Ants

 Spring sprung, and suddenly we hit 78F with snow expected in a few days. Its a topsy turvey world, something about the warm winds blowing backward from the mountains I heard.

I went out to my best out apiary today, to count how many survivor hives I have. Where 20 or more once were strong, I counted 7 with bees still flying. It took a few years to lose that many, but it happened, relentlessly.  Frankly, I'm a bit exhausted with doing autopsies, having done hundreds, and so I barely opened the dead outs. Just enough to see the small cluster of dead bees.

Next task is to form some sort of last ditch mite control plan,something new, something deadly, and see how it goes. I have no doubt in my mind that this is all about mites, and so feel sure that this is what I need to do, or lose these last hives. I count I have 12 total now. Down from 40 a few years back. It is disheartening. If I can keep it going, great, I will, I have much of my life devoted to this, but if I can't , then I'll have a lot of supers to sell off cheap.

While opening hives this year, I consistently found strong ant colonies between the top cover and the rigid insulation. Fat with eggs, and scrambling to get them to safety. In this species, which I doubt is uncommon, there are two sizes of workers, there is a huge guard ant I think, mixed in. You can see her here, in the upper left.

And here are the eggs- laid out in the great warmth of the roof of this hive. Ants scrambling to get the eggs to safety, and the eggs dark with larval ants inside. If ants made good honey, I'd be up for raising them- way less trouble, and seemingly, a lot harder working.

I don't know why this would be different than years past- it might be just that I've been more hands off over the winter- but I also note that the Maple blossomed at least a month early. I don't think that's a good thing though- as the bee population isn't big enough to take advantage of it as it would be a month later.

It suggests a warmer year already- more growing days- though I haven't checked that. If so, I sure hope it doesn't mean a hot summer- those have been really awful these past few years.