Starving Bees! What to When the Cupboards Run Bare

摘要

Beekeepers are often befuddled come early spring—a time of golden forsythia, soft fuzzy pussy willows, nodding daffodils and brilliant yellow dandelions—when their first colony inspections reveal not the joyous hum of thousands of well fed overwintered honey bees, but rather the horrors of winter starvation. Dead bees. Lots and lots of dead bees. Golden amber honey bees with their heads stuck deep into dark comb cells. Decaying bees crammed together between the frames in an attempt to stay warm, all in vain. Bottom boards overflowing with the rotting, carrion corpses of winter bees jamming shut the bottom entrance, wet and suffocated. Moldy combs, dampness, and stench—all the earmarks of colony death.