Bees Lost

How awful
It is so worrying the death of bees worldwide.
The knock-on effects are frightening.

Your blog has reminded me that 1 of our bird boxes was inhabited by bees last year ... not a sign of them yet !

Oh you poor thing.!!! Im glad that your daughter took the hive to find out why. We all live and learn. Will you try again?? I hope so. Ive seen a few bees in these parts. Just today ordered a lot of bee loving plants. I think we all have to do 'our bit' in any way we can

Yes,we will try again.
Adele tells us that the queen bee in her own hive ( which survived),will lay eggs and when she spots another that looks like a future queen,she will hopefully be able to move it into our own empty hive with some of her followers,and then we will be back to square one.

I think it depends a bit on how fast the swarm will grow. A larger swarm than ours
( which died),should be able to survive the bad weather.

At the meeting she attended,with the hive, to show the other members the problem,it seems that one of the other members,who has lots of hives which are rented out to fruit farmers ,also lost about three lots this year the same as we ourselves did.

There was talk a while back of bees getting a virus maybe thats the reason

I imagine you must get quite attached to them, I'm so sorry to hear the bad news. Let's hope a reason is found.

Have you found beebase https://secure.fera.defra.gov.uk/beebase/ it provides a resource for beekeepers and may be of some help if you are going to try again.

What a rotten way to move into spring.

I can understand your sadness. You cared for the bees and did all you could for them. I hope you can find an answer as to why they died. I wonder if you will try having more bees .