what do beekeepers mean when they say the bees are leaving and not coming back???

Question

I thought bees were frozen and died in the winter and somehow new bees were born? They say bees are fed sugar water instead of honey ...would it help to put out a feeder with honey for bees?How can bees disappear and no one knows anything about it?

Answer 1

In New Scientist of March 22 there is an article about this. A portion of it says
There is no shortage of potential culprits; European honeybees make up the vast majority of commercial stocks in the US and they are susceptible to myriad viral and fungal blights and two forms of parasitic mites, one of which wiped out about half of the American honeybee population in the 1980s. Yet, in this instance, the precise cause of the sudden decline, dubbed "colony collapse disorder", remains elusive. The pattern of disappearance offers few clues, since CCD appears to be widespread and plagues non-migrating colonies as well as those that are moved from place to place to pollinate crops.

Answer 2

If beekeepers say bees are leaving and not coming back, they may mean they are "swarming" around a new queen and leaving their "birth" beehive to start a new colony. This is how bees expand to new territory. A new queen hatches and part of the colony leaves with her to find a new home.

Bees cannot survive in the really cold weather unless they are protected somewhat. Also, where they can survive, they need their honey to live on over winter so if people take it all away, they have nothing to live on.

Beekeepers do feed their bees sugar water when there is no natural food for them. That would be like right now here in Wisconsin where in March and early April there are still no blooms for them to search for nectar.