January 23, 2013 Warm Spring.

It's been an unseasonably warm winter. Only one freeze night so far and it's the end of January. Bee spring is underway. We collected 200 bees/hive  for the viral mapping project on the 21st. The North hive had good beginning buildup of brood, but the tray had small hive beetle larva in it. I replenished the dehydrated lime to take care of them.
Out at the farm, the big hive is really too weak to sustain. I combined it with last spring's nuc. Now, it's double deep brood boxes on it now. It was really strong. I'll check it again in two weeks (2/7/13) and see how to build up is going. There's sufficient nectar and some drone cells. It's time to clean up the frames, rotate out some of the brood  frames and generally get the equipment ready for spring.

New year, new challenges

January 14th, 2013. New Year's resolution. Blog more frequently. Three hives were doing well at the end of December. The East hive, and two hives at the farm. I treated all of them with Apiguard the end of November. When I put the second treatment, they seem to be doing fine. All of them had stores and the two older hives had full honey supers to get them thru the winter. I had not been feeding this winter yet.

When I check them this weekend this is what I found:
North 5: good activity reasonable brood for this time of year, gathering pollen, lots of food  stores, no signs of pests.Added a queen excluder to force them to separate between the honey super and brood box.

At the farm, first year hive : gathering pollen, very calm, need to do some repairs, no sign of pests, capped brood, no drone brood. Seems to be okay.

At the farm, large hive, called east hive: this normally hot was very calm, took off the full honey super, took out the spacer and the Apiguard, so quiet. Didn't look like there's a queen, almost no bees, found some capped brood. I think I might be losing this.

All of the hives have had good food stores, so I haven't been feeding this winter yet. The theory is that the treatment cause the Queen to shutdown and there have been insufficient bees to maintain. Either they have absconded or they have simply died off.

I will have to go into each one next week to check for progress and to sample for the virus testing. I can see then how weak the East Hive is.

If it's not strong enough I will combine it with the first year hive and leaving with just the two of them.

This is been the week a very warm weather. It's in the seventy's and yearly 80's everyday.

This is what it looks like.