After the final hive check before winter, it’s been hard to wait for it to be warm enough to open them up again! Bees have to work very hard to generate warmth, and since heat rises, you really don’t want to take the roof off their house and let all the warm air escape. When March brought us several warm, sunny days in a row – we suited up and checked on the bees!

We had our suspicions that one of the hives may not have made it through the winter. After completing our check, we discovered we’re down 2 hives: One hive completely absconded – no sign bees had ever been there, aside from the wax they left behind. We noticed a lot of activity a few weekends before, and in hindsight, that was probably when they made their Great Escape. Hopefully they’ll find a new home and survive in the wild somewhere. The other hive did have dead bees inside, so they either didn’t have the resources or the population to make it through the winter. As sad as this is, it’s also very much a part of beekeeping, and the fact we only lost 2 hives feels like a victory in the long run.

The other 3 hives we opened are doing great though! Population numbers are high, they’ve been building burr comb in the {small} space between the top of the frames and the lids, and we spotted a queen! When we popped off one lid, we even discovered honey! This wasn’t there when we did our last hive check, so these girls were very busy over the winter. We went ahead and added supers to the two hives without one, to help prevent swarm-instincts, and will be keeping a close eye on the hives as spring progresses. And we went back the next warm weekend to swap one of the hive boxes – now all our hives are out of the “retired” boxes.

We’ll be monitoring the hives the next several weeks – we are contemplating trying to make some splits, to increase our numbers again. And we’re also still playing around with ideas for alternate hive boxes, so we may be doing some more bee-moving in the future. It’s finally bee season again, and there was much rejoicing.

And now the fun stuff. Decided to get the “report” out of the way first, and then share pictures. Enjoy!

All in all, bee season is off to a promising start! I cannot wait to see what happens with the swarm traps this year, and see how these girls handle the spring nectar flow.