Food!

A little food for the girls in the cold.During the really cold weather, if we get a sunny day, I will feed back a frame of money left over at the end of fall. I keep the frames in the freezer til I'm ready to use them. I'll put them out at night, and usually by the morning they've been found. It's a great opportunity to look at the girls up close and check what their wings look like. I know, not all of them were from my hive. They are so intent on filling their honey bellies that you can get very close without them noticing at all.

Snow in late January

The sky looks like a dove gray blanket. The forecast is for snow, or at least snow showers overnight and by tomorrow morning. Two hives are down by the lake. One hive is out at the farm. All seem to be doing well, but this weather is very unexpected. Each hive has been bringing in pollen. I've been feeding them and they showed no signs of slowing down.

A tale of 2 hives

The hive at the farm, known as the East hive was actually two that has now been combined into one with two deep brood boxes.
The number of bees outside on this mild cloudy day is small, although they are actively bringing in pollen.
In front of the hive there are bodies. I see the bodies of yellow Jacket wasps, and many bees. There is also the remains of the newspaper shredding that had been between the two boxes. By feel, the weight of the box seems fine. There is a gap held open by a twig between the 2 boxes. This provide something elation. The weather has been rather warm and not as rainy as it should be, but the moisture on cloudy days like this can be high.
The North hive, the one at the house, on the other hand, was very very active. The weight was good and there were no signs of problems in the tray below the screened bottom.
Health problems prevent me from looking into this box today. Either one of them, actually however I hope to do so within the next week. It's all is well I do not plan to requeen either this year., but will wait and see

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.

Bee spring 2012 and the building up begins

Without wishing to encourage the evil eye, I'll say that this mild winter has been good for the bees. I weighed the hives in November and then again today. The east hive is holding steady. It has a single brood box with top feeder. The north hive has put some of the sugar water in storage. It weighed into day at 67.2 - that's brood box and one super. There's no excluder in between.
I opened the north hive today and it was "full o' bees." The incident I reported two weeks ago during a warm spell that looked like robbing was most likely the result of a brood burst with lots of new bees taking test flights. The yellow jackets were so aggressive during the fall I thought I had another robbing incident on my hands.The "war of the worlds" photos demonstrates how many types of bugs want to get in on the action.
Today, the temperatures climbed into the 70s. We're still six weeks from our last "typical" freeze date. I wanted to be sure that all was stable in the hive as I begin to ready for the build up and the nectar flow in April.
I have not tested for varroa mites since the fall. That's the next step. I used the newest natural agent, Hopguard, last September in the north and east hives to knock the population down. It doesn't kill varroa in the brood, just the active mites.

OMG, another disaster

Although there had been very little activity outside the hive, I had no evidence that wax moths had taken over the inside. My first clue was seeing cocoons when I switched out feeder bottles.

First day of fall and it is time for another entry. This time a wax moth disaster. The short version is:  Queenless at the end of August. Dry weather. Re-queened at the height of summer heat. All seemed well. Waited three week. Opened the hive to this!
Moral of the story. Late re-queening, probably won't be successful. Take the hive, weak in numbers but still healthy and merge with a strong hive. Don't think you can fool the wax moths. Yuck will ensue.
Check out all the photos at the link on "See the Bees." Read the full story on the September 24th entry.