February 2011

It's been a cold snowy winter so far. My two beehives went into this winter in good shape, lots of bees and lots of stored honey. But now it's looking like I may have lost one of them, but I can't be absolutely sure until close to Spring when temps get back to 50F in the daytime. Seems to be plenty of healthy activity from the hive on the right though, on the rare sunny days we've had. Nothing much else to do but wait and see. I'm glad now that I had ordered one new colony for this Spring, just in case I had a loss. Seems lots of folks are experiencing rather heavy hive losses this winter so far.

UPDATE: Feb. 14th Valentine's day-

This video shows the first winter day to hit up to fifty degrees F and sunny.
It shows that the hive I suspected had died is indeed dead, but the other hive is very active and seems quite strong and healthy. Only another two months or so of winter to go- hope they make it! They sure enjoyed the warm day today- everyone was able to go on 'cleansing flights' to relieve themselves!