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.