BANGOR DAILY NEWS • March 8, 2022
The up and down temperatures of February and March this year have lowered my expectations for good winter survival across Maine. We have had a few very warm days, which frees the bees to have a very desirable cleansing flight. On those warm days the clusters break up and bees start to move, cleaning out dead bees and accessing combs of, as yet, untouched honey. The problem has been that these warm spells have been followed by cold fronts bringing temperatures down too fast for the colony to reestablish its warm winter cluster. When that happens, the bees try in vain to reform their large winter cluster but instead can only huddle together in small groups each too small to generate sufficient heat to survive the sudden chill.