After a brutal winter, bees and beekeepers are looking forward to a spring warmup. Are the bees still alive? Has the queen survived the winter? Is there sufficient food storage? These are some questions I want answered.
We had a couple of unusual warm days the past week in the northern US. The high temperature went up to 72F. I took advantage of the nice weather and inspected all my hives.
I have one colony in single nuc box and 6 colonies in single deep in my backyard. Now let's open the hives and see how the bees are doing.
This is the single nuc. Plenty of sugar and pollen patty. A couple of frames full of honey. The food storage should last till blooming of maple trees in mid-March when I will start spring feeding. The queen is alive! It is such a good feeling to see a big and fat queen in the spring!
Here is the first single deep. Lots of sugar left, but pollen patty is almost gone. No queen on this frame. Queen is spotted on this frame!
Second single deep. Lots of sugar left, but pollen patty is all gone. No queen on this frame. It is on this frame! This queen has survived the winter!
Third single deep. Sugar is mostly gone. Pollen patty is all gone. It is a very strong colony. Maybe a little too strong for early March. This queen is a great layer.
Fourth single deep. Half sugar is gone. All pollen patty is gone. This a beautiful queen! The workers are all excited to attend to the queen.
Fifth single deep. A quarter of sugar eaten. All pollen patty eaten. Great looking queen!
Sixth single deep. No sugar eaten. No pollen eaten. May be a weak colony? The queen looks just fine. The colony is strong. So this colony might be a thrifty one and uses resources efficiently.
All of my colonies made it to early March. The bees, however, are not completely out of woods yet. Low temperature is going to be in the teens in 7-10 days. Temperature will then gradually go up. After the cold snap I will remove the winter wrapping and start spring feeding.
In the meantime, each colony received two fresh pollen patties to feed to the baby bees ---------------------------------------------------------
