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  • From: Marty Hanks <marty AT justbeenc.com>
  • To: "<ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>" <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [ocba] Weird times ahead
  • Date: Sun, 27 Dec 2015 22:07:58 -0500

Sharing the NEWest weather forecast for southern US.


http://firsthandweather.com/1238/pattern-change-along-with-winter-storm-chances-increasing/

As we continue to feel the new effects of global climate change we as
beekeepers need to recognize what this means in our yards.

The GCC issue means more than seasonal flora shifts, but extreme weather
pattern shifts will continue to show up in our yards. Not great news but a
few things to think about & expect.

-if you wrap your hives you have already noticed a delay in that practice,
but moving forward in this ever changing world you will have to consider
wrapping or not more closely as temperature shift are more common. We are NO
longer on old trends and our extreme colds are coming as far north as Canadas
blizzards.

So adapting to swiftly changing temps will become a NEW skill set for current
and future beekeepers. If we get early warm winters followed by canadian
blasts we have to be both southern & canadian keepers.

-these climate flip flops can mean lots of brood chill.

If any of your yards look like ours then flowers are in bloom (even spring
varieties) and our girls are bringing in food. With abnormal warm temps and
food coming in some hives are starting to raise brood in this "fake spring"
like conditions. With this (and many other) projected severe cold flip you
can count on the colonies clustering. Leaving brood to chill and die.

What to look for: IF this trend does unfold you should see (on warmer days)
the cleaning out of brood stages to dead bees. It may and should be a higher
than normal body count this time of year. Expected with extreme weather
flips. They are building up then will go into tight clusters. So not great
news, but look for it. For the new folks bee bodies on snow seem even higher
so this may look even worse.

- what does this extreme & abnormal weather shift mean for our bees?

The heck if i know...if i did id be a profit, but i know over the past 5 1/2
years of keeping bees i've noticed food supplies availability shift as bloom
cycles change. The bees ARE missing out on these early food supplies as flora
changed its bloom time.

Last year and apparently this year we will see early warm then harsh colds.
This delay then big flip is not good, but we will have to see how it unfolds
on total brood mortality and potentially disease that may spread from "brood
removal".

In short, expect the unexpected and be willing to learn the style of
beekeeping practices of our northern and western brethren. The times are a
changing quickly...my BEST guess is a successful beekeeper will bee one who
"keeps" bees to the conditions of the day; not how it use to be! Those days
are behind us.

Last year there were 3 big cold events. Of the 30% bee loss we had last year
HALF happened after the third super cold spell. That third and late cold
spell came late in winter and followed a couple of warm weeks. So expect the
unexpected and Best of luck

Marty


Sent from my iPhone


  • [ocba] Weird times ahead, Marty Hanks, 12/27/2015

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