It’s extremely rare to make it through the winter without some losses. Hive loss is just part of beekeeping these days. The great news for us, this year, is our loss reasons appear to be mostly self-inflicted! Got busy and didn’t make some hard calls.
Using OA to treat the hives for mites, worked incredibly well! No mite infested hives thus far.
Unfortunately, we had a few hives that starved! Eeek! This is terrible! Even with a candy board on top they weren’t able to get to the food during the cold. Ugh. Should have gone in with frames of honey.
We lost a few swarm hives that should have had queens replaced in the fall. Darn.
Some were just too small and should have been combined or aggressively fed in the fall to build up numbers.
Overall we are pleased and post this as a reminder for this coming fall.