Everyone makes mistakes. Unfortunately what I thought was a good idea turned out to be quite the opposite. When I was cleaning out the hives last night, I poured some extra syrup and scrapped out the dried sugar into a watering bottom.
I figured it would give them all a chance to clean up the waste. I should have put sticks and some leaves or something that would float and avoid mass drownings. Unfortunately I did not.
 |
| It looks like lots of activity at the hives! |
 |
| In reality there were a lot of dead bees who drowned... |
|
I estimate that there are several hundred dead bees in there. It is obviously pretty upsetting; it is just another lesson in beekeeping. Bees apparently drown very easily. This will not have an effect on the overall numbers of bees in my hive; since there are likely 30 000+ in both of my larger hives and 15 000 in my newer hive.
It seems that no matter what you do sometimes, there's nothing you can do about the drowning. I would guestimate several thousands of bees lost over a few weeks of feeding from 12 hives. Too high IMO. I've just posted my musing on this topic today.
ReplyDeletehttp://dobeekeeping.blogspot.com/2010/10/thoughts-on-different-ways-of-fall.html