Hard Winter For Michigan Honey Bees

<p><em><a href="mailto:allenre@interlochen.org">By Bob Allen</a></em></p> <p>Backyard beekeepers in Michigan are reporting losses of 90-to-100 percent of their bees over winter. The losses are thought to be mostly weather related, and not directly caused by factors that have been decimating whole colonies of honey bees across the country for several years.</p> <p>Because of the level of losses this winter, small scale beekeepers may not be able to replace their hives in time to produce honey this year.</p> <p>Roger Hoopingarner, president of the Michigan Beekeepers Association, says this winter was a long confinement for bees without a break in the weather.</p> <p>"Bees do not defecate in the hive," he says. "And they wait for a warm day, which has to be above 50 degrees, to fly out and get rid of their waste." </p> <p>Those bees that did fly out in the cold froze to death.</p> <p>A drought last fall also reduced the flow of nectar that bees rely on to get them through the winter, but Hoopingarner says this winter's losses won't have much effect on commercial crops that rely on bees for pollination.</p> <p>"Most of our larger commercial beekeepers move into the south, Georgia, Florida, Alabama for kind of recovering their stocks and rebuilding for the coming year," he says.</p>