Beekeeping in Richmond, Virginia

Inspecting a Friend’s Hive

My cousin, in Charles City County, picked up two bee hives right around when I did (Spring of 2009), except that he ordered packages from somewhere, whereas I picked up Nuc’s from Tom Fifer, a beekeeper in the Richmond, Virginia area. He received his packages in early April and I received my Nuc’s in mid-May. This gave his bees a distinct advantage (in Nectar Flow time), but I rationalized that I would be getting the stronger bees for the long haul (local bees that have not been overly treated in the last year or two and should have a superior chance of surviving our Winters and our pests.) Over the Winter, one of his hives died, whereas I still have both of mine. But, to be fair, I nursed my weaker hive along and I do not think it would have made it otherwise. He did not do much nursing.

But, he is not sure what is going on in his remaining hive and would like to find the Queen. I told him that I would be happy to lend a hand and have a look. After Easter Church Services, I dropped by his house and we got ready to do the investigation. He immediately suited up, from head-to-toe, in bee gear. He was armed for bear and made no bones about it. He said that one nailed him beneath the eye the other day and he was just walking by the hive! Needless to say, this tidbit had me a tad worried. I have never had them get angry by just hanging around the outside of the hive! So, I did put on my veil and lit the smoker (figured I should be prepared, just in case.)

We opened the hive and began the inspection with little ado. I did note that he was smoking them a bit differently then I did (more smoke, with a lot of little puffs, whereas I simply give it one or two long pulls and typically leave them be.) Regardless, we were able to get into the top deep and immediately discovered empty brood areas in several frames. This was odd to me until he advised that he had done a reversal about 10 days earlier. He simply did it because someone said it should be done in March. This was probably not a good idea (I’ve always been told to go by what your bees are telling you, not by someone else’s schedule.) Regardless, I do not think it did much harm, as this hive had more bees then either of my hives. They were everywhere. There were so many of them that I was sure we would find swarm prep in progress.

The hive inspection was interesting, in that he had made the same error that I did. Lots of propolis was built up between the frames and had to be removed. We also found where his bees had build drone brood comb between the hive bodies. We had to destroy this (to totally do our Spring cleaning.) When lots of drone pupae were exposed, I commented that you could sometimes see mites (or so I had been told) and, lo and behold, I saw one! There, right on one of the drone pupae, was a bit, nasty mite. Upon closer look, I could see the thing moving its legs! Truly a nasty little creature.

By the time it was done, I could see a ton more pollen in his then I had seen in mine. He had about the same honey left (2 frames of capped honey) and, maybe, the same capped brood. He only had one frame that was chock full of capped brood. I think that his reversal may have gotten the queen and the bees a bit out of whack. He asked if he should re-reverse them, but I advised to leave them be for now. We never saw the queen and I was not sure where she was. Regardless, the hives are good and clean now and it will be a breeze to investigate them next time. I figure two weeks and I will go out and have another look with him. This will keep us on top of any possible queen cells and hopefully enable us to find the queen to determine whether another reversal is needed or not.

He also advised that the bees didn’t seem to get riled up, like he was used to. I will say that they got a bit angry when we were destroying the comb between the brood chambers, but they did get over it. I would call these bees gentle. I am guessing our next inspection will be a bit easier.

When to Reverse – lessons learned (maybe)

For the past several posts, I have been sweating about the fact that I could not reverse my bee hives in my Richmond, Virginia area. To begin with, I was worried because it seemed that March was when it should be done for my area (based on my internet forum browsing – I do my beekeeping in Varina, Virginia, just outside of Richmond, Virginia, in a Zone 7 area) and my bees had not gotten to that state in March (both the Geronimo Bee Hive and the Albo Bee Hive are in the bottom deep.) Secondly, I wanted to clean up the bottom Deep’s, because of all of the burr comb that I thought was all in between the frames.

Well, to the second point, it appears that my main problem was that I did a terrible job of keeping the propolis off of the frames last Summer. The gals would gunk up the area where the frames touch and I kept letting it build up. Each time I inspected the hive, I would remove the frames and then push them back together (without removing the propolis.) As it so happens, the frames were slowly getting further and further apart, as the propolis kept building up. Over the past two weeks, I have removed the majority of this propolis and effectively dealt with that mess. I also learned a valuable lesson about ongoing maintenance as you inspect your hives! Clean off that propolis! It’s fairly easy to do anyway, taking just a swipe of the hive tool.

But, the first point is still a problem. Only now I have read where other folks are talking about reversing now or even in mid-March. Many of these folks are in my area or zone. So, now I am wondering if my bees are doing everything right. Only a week will tell, but if this turns out to be the case, I will find the queens up in the upper Deeps laying (well, I might find a new queen in the Albo hive, who is not laying yet.) If this turns out to be true, I may still reverse yet (although probably not until two weeks from now or so.) One poster indicated that he reverses when the main dandilion bloom comes on. I am close to that, as more and more are showing up. I am not cutting my lawn because of that (although my wife believes it is a convenient excuse…)

Spotty Brood and Lots of Grumpiness

Yesterday, I attacked the ‘weak’ hive (I think I will start calling it the Albo Hive, after my brother=) to clean up the mess that I allowed to invade the hive last year. Upon opening up the hive, I was surprised to see that these bees were actually eating the pollen substitute. The Geronimo Bees (Hive 1) had given up eating on that stuff and I assumed that it was due to good pollen available in the wilds. Who knows. These gals are eating on it at a decent pace, so I left it on the hive.

I lit the smoker and suited up, as I figured things might get nasty when I delved into the lower brood chamber. But, I did not smoke them upon the breakdown of the upper Deep and all seemed ok. They only had a couple of frames of honey, but I believe this will be enough at this point (we are expecting 80’s for the next week or so). The weather could be a real boon for beekeeping in Richmond, Virginia. We’ve had a lot of rain and now we seem to be getting some good, warm temperatures.

Another thing to remember on the upper deep for the Albo Hive is that one of the frames is starting to come apart from the top bar on one side. This is one of the frames that is full of honey (so it is heavy) and probably is an accident waiting to happen. My goal will be to remove this frame and hopefully repair it once we get into mid-April or so (when I do not think they will need the honey.)

There was a lot of burr comb between the upper and lower Deep’s. I am not sure why this was the case, as they have plenty of room in the upper deep to build out more comb. Regardless, I turned on the smoker and began to remove all of this. Things got a little hairy during this episode, as every frame on the lower deep was covered with bees and the smoker only sent them scurrying for a second or two. But, I was able to get the burr comb off and begin removing and inspecting each frame.

During this adventure, the bees really got grumpy. I tried to remain calm and am sure that, without my gear, I would have gotten stung multiple times. On two or three occasions, I had to walk away from the hive and let them settle down a bit (once they get mad, smoke is only partially effective for these bees.) I had to remove a lot of propolis – a ton of it. I will be aware of this going forward. This stuff should be cleaned off each time you remove a frame.

Two other items of note (of great importance, actually) were the brood and a possible queen cell. Having just looked at (I am guessing) 7 or 8 frames full of brood in the Geronimo Hive last week, the spotty nature of this brood was definitely noticeable. The Geronimo hive had several frames that were literally full of capped brood – not one single miss. But, the Albo hive didn’t have a single frame that was chock full. Plenty were 95% full, but there were always a dozen or so empty cells scattered around. It gives the appearance of my queen being on drugs and missing here and there as she walks about the comb in a random (stumbling) pattern. This only confirmed to me that this queen needs to go.

I did also find what appeared to be a supercedure cell. It may have been what was left of the supercedure cell from last Fall, but who knows. I am hoping that this was a sign that they are going to raise another queen. The cell was in the upper half of the frame, so I left it alone and went about my business. I am certain that these gals would have died this last Winter if I had not intervened with feeding in the Summer, Fall and Winter. I will not intervene this year, so they better start getting it right.

What really got the girls mad was when I had to cut off the top part of some capped honey on one-half of one side of a frame that had ended up too far from its neighbor last Summer. Instead of light buzzing, they amped up to a high tenor and really started cursing at me, buzzing in my face and trying to sting my netting. But, I was able to get the frame trimmed down a bit and the frames fit very nicely together once I was finished.

All in all, this was a success. I did not find the queen, but did find eggs and larvae. I also located where they were storing nectar and pollen, near the brood nest. They should get to a decent start and, if they get a good queen, have time to collect a nice harvest during the flow in May. I did find some drone brood, so things are getting close.

The Royal Lady Eludes Me Again!

Two dead bees, head first in the comb — Dead bees that starved

Today (actually, 10 minutes ago), I took on the first major hive inspection of the year, focusing solely on Hive 1, the hive that I have started to call my Geronimo Hive. As per my last post, I had lots of expectations for this inspection. Given the fact that folks to the North of me are talking about reversing already, I went in prepared for Bear. Outside of my normal gear, I brought with me:

One of my new Nuc’s, in case I found queen cells
A brood chamber full of frames with foundation, to replace any frames that I removed from this hive, in case I had to
A top board, as I was definitely going to remove the feeder, which they were not using at all (two idiot bees had ventured into the mix and drowned, of course)
A capping knife, to cut out any major burr comb that I came across
A new, painted bottom board (the current screened bottom board is not painted and I want to paint it this year, plus it will be easier to clean it away from the hive.)

The goal of this inspection was to figure out what was going on, find the queen and clean up the bottom brood chamber. For the most part, it was a success.

When I opened up the hive, I removed the feeder and dumped it on the ground nearby. I then removed the Imrie shim and I found one bee eating on the pollen substitute. I think it was wise to drop this in here, although I probably should have done it early (like early February) instead of early March. They had eaten half of a full patty, but now were finished with it. As I found out later, they were bringing in more then enough pollen to feed themselves (and natural pollen surely tastes better then the stuff that I gave them.)

Honey Bee Comb Eaten Through — Wonder how this happened?

I removed the pollen (tossing it on the ground nearby), and started my inspection of the top brood chamber. There were a fair number of bees about the place, although all of the honey towards the south of the hive was gone (except for a couple of patches). In one frame, I found two bees that appeared to have died of starvation, with their tails sticking out of the comb (of course, I forgot to poke them, so I am only assuming they were dead.) On the north side of the hive, I found 3 to 4 full frames of capped honey. For the most part, this hive body was fairly clean. So, I put it aside and began to examine the motherload.

This time, I lit my smoker and hit them with a few puffs. There were tons of bees (I should have grabbed a picture of them.) I think they covered 6 or 7 frames on the top (and I mean tons – not just a few wandering about – head-to-tail, thick). The frames in this hive have no space on either end, due to my lack of experience last year. One of my goals was to remedy this.

Ball of Honey Bees — What the heck are they doing here?

I began to remove the frames, one-by-one. What I found was interesting. What I did not find was irritating. The hive had a couple of frames with lots of pollen and some nectar/honey-being-ripened (partially full cells). One frame, oddly enough, was eaten up a lot. It was like wax moths had gotten to it, but I found no evidence of them in the hive. As I moved through the hive, I came across 4 or more frames that were stock full of capped brood. There were probably one to two frames with eggs and larvae. Fortunately, there were no queen cells (that I found, anyway.) I also did not find that rascal Queen. But, I did not push it, as the frames with the eggs (where I assumed she’d be), had bees a couple of layers thick, all on top of one another. I figured she could easily be in there, out of my sight. I did find one frame with a few capped drone cells, but it couldn’t have been more then 30 or so cells. This was a positive sign, as I also did not see any drones, so we should not be very close to any swarming activity.

Honey Bee Propolis — Propolis Scraped from Frames

One of the big things that I learned during this inspection was that my problem with the Geronimo hive was not burr comb, but propolis. I see now that the whole ‘cleaning’ aspect of beekeeping escaped me (my wife would say that it escapes me in life). When I was inspecting the frames last year, I should have been using my hive tool to scrape the propolis off of the sides of the frames (where they come together). Since I did not do that, it had built up a lot between several frames, spreading them out substantially. But, I took care of it at this inspection, scraping the sticky stuff off of the side bars of each frame, so they could come together more flush. In the end, I did have a little space on the ends of the frames (although I will have to continue to clean through the warm months to fully defeat this issue.)

Junk on the front of my Honey Bee Hive — What is this junk at the entrance of my hive?

As I was leaving the hive, I took a quick picture of something that has started to bug me over the last month. It seems to me that they are generating a big mess at the front of the hive. Some of this might have been here all along, but I am certain that it was not this thick. I am assuming it is excrement, possibly due to the lemon feeder I had on top these past few weeks. Regardless, I am watching it (they do get problems with having some kind of bee diarrhea, but this doesn’t look at bad as the pictures that I have seen of this problem.)

Also, this last picture was just an oddity. For some reason, bees from the outside frames that I had put on my frame holder decided to show off and do some kind of bee acrobatics. I am not sure if this is normal or not, but my bees are always putting on this kind of show (they did it last year and the young ones from this year appear to have picked up the same trick. I typically have to hold them over the hive and push them off with my hand.

Lots of Activity

Hive 2 Starting Real Pollen Gathering Activities — We need a traffic cop...

Both hives showed strong activity this weekend. There were tons of bees on the landing board and all on the front faces of both hives. It’s fun to watch them coming and going when they are active. They are really bringing in the pollen now, yellow’s, red’s and a beige color. I decided not to open them, as I am hopeful that they are moving up into the upper deeps. And this gets to the heart of my worries.

Having checked a few other blogs out in cyberspace and monitoring some forums, there are lots of folks to the north of me that have already done their reversals. Although the weak hive definitely had a barrier (tons of sugar water honey, making them honey-bound, above them), the stronger hive should have moved up. They have lots of empty, drawn comb above them.

Regardless, I have come to learn that there is no correlation between seeing something that I did not expect and the well being of my hives. Said another way, I am typically concerned for naught (and this has frequently driven me to do things that probably annoyed the bee’s at best and set them back at worst!) Even so, I am certain that it is past time for me to actually break the bottom deep’s open. As of now, I have only viewed them from above, since there is so much burr comb in their loose formation (see my earlier post on why this happened, as I cannot bear the pain of repeating my idiocies again!) So, this coming weekend is going to be a big one. As a reminder to myself, my plan is as follows:

My Honey Bees finally start to eat the pollen substitute. — A few bees finally decide to eat on the pollen patty.

Open each hive and pray that there is some movement into the upper deep’s (by ‘movement’, I mean that I need to see queen activity up there). If I see it, I may wait another week or two before proceeding to the next step. For me, it is critical to locate both queens at this inspection. I have gone 6 months without seeing either of them.
Remove each frame in the bottom deep and do a thorough inspection. Record honey, pollen and brood estimates.
Check for any drone cells. It is my understanding that swarming begins when the drones first emerge. I do not expect to see any this early, but we all know how it goes with my expectations.
Clean all frames of propolis and burr comb. This could get messy, so I hope to bring a little container along with me. I am going to clean up these frames. I might even smoke them for the first time this year if things get hairy.
Clean the bottom deep of propolis and any stray wax.
Take two of more of the oldest frames (the ones that came as part of the Nuc) and move them to the outside of the deep, for removal/replacement next year.
Identify what frame the queen is on and make sure she is not on the bottom. Then, remove the bottom deep from the screened bottom board and replace with my painted, screened bottom board.
Put them all back together.

Hopefully, this will all go well. The strong hive has had a big batch of sugar syrup and Honey-B-Healthy on them for a week now and they do not seem to have touched it. I think this is a positive sign, as they must be finding nectar out in the wilds (I noticed that my plum tree is blooming now.) This is little doubt that there are all kinds of surprises waiting for me, but here are some of the things that I might come across and my plans for dealing with them (I am trying to get these clear in my mind so that I have all of the necessary equipment on hand when I make this dive.)

Swarm Queen Cells: If I find these, I will do a split. I will move the old queen, a frame of brood and a frame or two of honey to a Nuc. If I have more then one frame with a queen cell on it, I might take one of the spare queen cells and also drop it into a Nuc. I purchased two Nuc’s this year for this exact reason. I honestly hope that I do not have to use them…
Supercedure Queen Cells: If the weak hive is getting ready to start a rebellion, I will let them do it. The hive looks strong right now, but they tried to get rid of her last Fall (but I stopped them – or I think I did!). If more then one frame has a queen cell on it, I will pull it and drop it into a Nuc with a couple of frames of honey.
Lots o’ Honey: If the weak hive still has 7+ frames of capped honey, I will take 3 frames of this and put it in the freezer. I will take a frame or two of drawn comb from the stronger hive (putting in foundation here) and drop it into the center of the weaker hive. The goal here is to create some brood-rearing space.

For my Nuc’s, I will use the honey frames from the weak hive. Unless things have changed, I will probably have a ton of them left over. But, who knows what I will find. If my course remains true to form, I will find none of the above and instead something totally odd.

Honey bees in the strong hive begin to venture out in Spring

Honey Bee’s Bringing in Pollen

Over the last couple of days, I have noticed a lot of pollen coming in. The usual gray, but mostly yellow with some a fairly deep red. The red could be the Maples, while the yellow could be the dandelions that have started to pop up here and there. I still have no idea what the gray is. Both hives seem to be active in bringing this in at a good pace. There is also a fair amount of activity on the landing board, possibly young bees doing some training flights.

As noted previously, the weak hive (which I fed syrup all Winter) has a Top Deep that is nearly full of honey (about 7.5 frames full of capped honey.) My reading online indicates that this could be a problem known as ‘honey bound’, where the queen has no place to lay because of all of the honey. This can trigger swarming activity. Kenny at the ERBA and a few folks online advised me to put a couple of empty frames of drawn wax (or simply foundation, if this is all I have – which it is, being a new beekeeper) in the center of the Deep’s, placing the ones currently there (which are full of capped honey) into the freezer for use later.

So, I ventured out over this past weekend to do just that. But, once I was able to get the top off, I noticed that I had some empty frames on the side. So, I swapped the empty frames for the full ones, right in the center of the Deep. I also stopped feeding them a few weeks ago, so the thought is that they will draw this wax out and start to move up. We’ll see…

Now, on to Hive 1, the strong hive. Up until this past weekend, I had thought that it was also honey bound (although I had stopped feeding them last November or December. But, when I went to swap out some empty frames this past weekend, I found that most of the frames in the upper Deep were actually empty! I now believe that my casual observations of the frames (without breaking them out of the Deep) was faulty. I even found two bees that were head first in the cells, as if they had starved (I didn’t poke them to see if they were alive, but doubt they were.) They still had a little capped honey, but not a ton (maybe 3 frames worth.) This was a pretty good lesson, as these guys could have starved. I should have been looking more carefully.

Since this hive, what I have been calling the Strong Hive, had so many empty, drawn frames that I only did a little re-arranging. Last night, I made up a batch of syrup and added 1 Teaspoon of Honey-Bee Healthy per quart. I put two gallons on this hive, thinking that they might need some assurances with the possibility of low food. I went back later this afternoon and didn’t find anyone on the syrup. This is odd. Either it was a little too chilly or they simply didn’t want it (maybe that lemon smell of the Honey-Bee Healthy freaked them out?!) Only time will tell. A couple of days in the high-60’s and low-70’s are coming up soon, so I hope to see some feasting then.

Article in the Post

A buddy at work emailed me a link to an article on Bees and CCD in the Washington Post this morning ( Click Here to See It ). Like most articles for the layman, it beats the drum on CCD, but it did have an interesting tidbit on Winter losses. From the author’s perspective, we have had one doozy of a Winter with very high Hive Loss rates. To this author, it was expected that you would lose about one-third of your hives before this last Winter. They expect much higher losses when the Spring counts come in.

For what it is worth, Kenny advised that he lost half of his hives. That’s a major blow, to be sure.

Still Hanging Out in the Basement

I am now have serious reservations about my decision to feed the weaker hive so much and then put cane sugar (Mountain Camp Method) on the hives in late January/early February. I checked both hives on Friday and, while strong, neither of them had made hardly any progress up into the upper Deep. They both have around 8 frames full of honey (made mostly from sugar syrup, I’d guess) above them. This is somewhat annoying, as I had plans to clean up and fix the lower deeps on both hives with a reversal. The way things are now, this is looking less and less likely (of course, maybe this will be another nube concern and I’ll find them moving up quickly later this month – we’ll see…)

The Varina Beekeeper’s Association had a meeting about putting woodenware together this past Tuesday, although the conversation was seriously sidetracked and we did not spent a lot of time on that topic. It is unfortunate, as the main speaker (Kenny) has a ton of knowledge. To that effect, I asked him about my hives and the fact that the bees were still hanging out in the bottom deep. He advised to take two empty frames (just foundation) and drop them in the center of the upper deeps. This will encourage them to draw these out and the queen is likely to start laying in them (she should need space as she ramps up for the Nectar flow.) I decided to try this on the (previously) weaker hive, since it already had two empty frames in it (both on the far outside of the deep.) I move the frames full of honey to the outside and swapped them with the empty ones.

On another positive note, I noticed the bees bringing in yellow pollen, in addition to the vanilla/almost gray pollen they were bringing in during February and March. Both hives seem to have tapped into this trove a bit. I also found out that the weaker hive is now taking to the pollen substitute, instead of tossing it out of the hive as it used to. A couple of dozen bees were working it before I uprooted them to swap out the frames.

Most of my boxes and nuc’s are now constructed and partially painted. The wet weather is keeping the paint wet and sticky, so it’s been a bit of a pain trying to prevent them from sticking together when I stack them. I hope most of this goes away in the next month to month and a half, when I’ll be adding the two new kids to the block.

Next Sunday I will get my first look at my cousin, Rob’s, bees. He has a strong hive and has not looked at them yet. He invited me to do so with him, so it should be good fun.

Bee Activity

The temps have popped up to 50 today in Richmond, Virginia and my honey bees are showing a bit of activity. The weak hive is showing the most activity, bringing in some pollen resources it would appear (and probably some training flights.) One of my large Maples has just started to bloom a bit (1 in 20 buds have broken), but I did not see any honey bees working it.

The strong hive (as of last year anyway) did not show as much activity this time, but I am not at all worried about these discrepancies anymore.

The Bees are still Downstairs…

Picture of a bee cluster in late February — Is this a lot of bees?

Being my first Winter, I can only read about what to expect (and ask some of the experienced folks in my area.) One of the things that I keep reading about is swarm prevention in these early months before the main nectar flow. One strategy (that I am going to implement) is to ‘reverse your deeps’. Effectively, the bees work there way up into the top deep (eating honey as they go) as they prep for the coming Spring. Once they get to the top, they are more inclined to go into Swarm Prep mode, as it appears that they are out of space.

To combat this, you supposedly (I have not done it yet – this is my first Winter) swap the bottom and top deep’s (thus pushing the girls back to the bottom with a lot of empty, drawn comb above them.) They suddenly decide that they cannot waste energy going into Swarm Prep until they fill out that comb above (the number 1 driver for a bee is to live through the coming Winter – build stores, the number two driver is to propagate, or swarm.)

Well, I went into my hives yesterday (temps got into the upper-50’s) and both clusters were still in the lower deeps. I actually took the top deep off of the weaker hive (Hive 1), as I could see that they were not in the upper deep. The entire cluster was still in the same spot that they were congregating in November – up at the front of the hive. I have heard experienced beekeepers say that a good cluster is about the size of a basketball. I’m not sure these were that big, but they were dang close (see Pic : Is this a lot of bees?).

But, back to the original point, they had not taken a single step into the upper deep (in fact, neither hive had.) They were no where close to needing a ‘reversal’. I am guessing this is perfectly normal, but I had expected to see some movement up. It’s actually great news, as both hives have 8+ frames full of honey (all above them). This should get them through the Winter (assuming they have the occasional warm stretch to reach it), although I can only attest to honey storage. So, hopefully my pollen patties will take care of the rest.

Burr Comb Between Hive Frames — The Tip of the Burr Comb

On a side note, this second picture shows the problems with having frames that are not pushed together. As mentioned in a previous post last Summer, I made a rookie error when I got my bees. Basically, I brought a Deep, full of foundation, to Tom Fifer to pick up my Nuc. He gave me 5 of his frames (full of bees, honey, brood and pollen – and of course the grand lady of a queen) for 5 of my empty frames. We closed the hive back up and left it for several hours before I came back that evening to put some hardware cloth over the entrance and transport them back to my home. Once at my home, I took the hardware cloth off.

This all worked great, but I missed the next step, which was crucial. I left them alone for two weeks before I started weekly check-ins (Hive Investigations), where I would pull the frames out and look at the busy ladies doing their stuff. The problem was that, during the transportation, the frames had become a bit disoriented and unevenly spaced. Although I only waited two weeks to open them up, that was enough time for them to build partial comb (I think they call it burr comb) all over the place, between the frames. It was a mess and I did not want to mess with these new bees by cutting it all out. Needless to say, this situation needs resolution, which I plan to do when I do the reversal! So, the reversal is both for the bees (anti-swarm) and the beekeeper (clean up a mess he is responsible for)!

Bees enjoying pollen and sugar with the Mountain Camp method

This next picture shows the bees from my strong hive (Hive 2), gorging on the pollen patty that I dropped in here last week. Of note, the weak hive did not appear to have touched the pollen patty that I left for them, but I am not sure that they have ever taken to the pollen substitute (they seem to like to throw it out of the hive, actually…) These gals, however, are going to town on this pollen substitute. There were a lot more bees in the upper deep as well, although most of the honey remains untouched (a good sign, I hope.) This hive was the most active today (in fact, this is the first time that they have been the most active.) Bees were all over the place and I actually saw some of them bringing in pollen (usually, Hive 1 is the only one that I actually see this activity in.) It’s good to see this life, although I wasn’t overly worried. It should be noted that these gals came out of the inner cover like a whirlwind when I took the top off. One of them did get a bit grumpy and would have stung me if she could have found purchase. But, I can’t blame her. It’s cold, no nectar is available and here is some joker in white poking around in my honey stores!

All in all, this was a good inspection. The Bees are alive. Honey stores appear to be good. The beekeeper was not stung=) In truth, it is an interesting lesson when reviewing all of the hand wringing I have been doing in previous journal entries. It’s been a tough Winter (or so I think). It will be interesting to see what other Beekeepers are seeing as a comparison. Hopefully, all are fairing as well or better.