Bee mortality
I hear from a lot of people that they're leery
of trying to keep bees because of Colony Collapse Disorder, so I was
intrigued when our teacher yesterday explained that only about 10% of
hive death in Virginia is due to CCD. On the other hand, he says
that about 30% of new hives don't survive their first winter, due to
factors including disease and lack of food reserves. (That makes
CCD responsible for the death of a measly 3% of Virginia's new hives
each year, in case you're having trouble with the math.)
Of course, you can counteract some of the non-CCD factors
by feeding your bees when you first get them (3 weeks is apparently the
magic number there, not a few months as I previously noted) and then
feeding them again if necessary in the summer lull from July to
August. You can also deal with a lot of pest problems by keeping
an eye on the hive --- the layman's term for integrated pest management
practices.
I read somewhere that caring for a hive of bees will take more time
than your cat but less time than your dog. That was obviously
written by a dog person --- Huckleberry and Strider definitely take up
a lot more of my time than Lucy. I'd put it differently --- bees
will take a little less time than chickens --- about an hour a week per
hive. If you're thinking of taking the plunge on a small,
backyard scale, I say go for it!
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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