Spring, Baby!

So, here it is!  Spring is upon us, and now that the dandelions are in full bloom (something that I'm happy about for the first time ever!), I'm ready to declare that we've successfully made it through the first winter with both hives intact.  I went out today and was able to conduct my first, thorough inspection of the year. 

I was able to get the entrance reducers off, to allow the bees to come in and out easier, as there was quite a traffic jam at the entrance.  It also will make it easier for the girls to get some of the debris off of the bottom board and out onto the ground.  You can see in the picture here, they are all set for some spring cleaning.
As you can see in the picture below, they have managed to get some things out of the hive.  That is the mass grave that is directly in front of the hive.  As the bees died over the winter, their sisters unceremoniously shoved them out the door, and onto the ground.

Moving on to somewhat happier news, the pollen is coming in like crazy!  We're going to refer back to the handy pollen chart that I used in several posts last year, and which can be found here.

The brownish yellow color of pollen they're loaded with in the first picture looks like it may be from a grey alder.  Hawthorne is also a possibility.  The light olive color that the bee on the right is bringing in the second picture is indicative of several different plants, but based on what we have around us, I'm guessing that it is from a crabapple tree.  However, it could also be from a Box Elder, an American Hazel, or an Oak tree.

I'll leave you with the good news that I have already added a honey super to one hive, and am very hopeful that we will experiences a large honey crop this year.  There are some exciting things coming up in the next few weeks when I get two more nucs and another package of bees, which will be going into a completely different type of hive.  Stay tuned, and enjoy this picture of a few bees coming in for a landing.

Like a Boss....

Well the weather is hovering right around 40 degrees today, so I was able to get out and do another "midwinter" check (even though it's the end of February, the weather hasn't decided to play along yet!)  Before I dive into how they're doing today, we're going to back up about 6 weeks to the last really warm snap we had when I was able to get out and check on them.

The girls were doing fairly well in both hives.  The weaker of the two hives going into the winter was (not surprisingly) not doing quite as well as the other, but they were still doing okay.  They had worked their way pretty high up in the second box, however, meaning that they were likely getting pretty low on stores of honey.  Knowing that we had the bulk of our winter weather yet to come, I decided to go ahead and feed them.

If you're not a beekeeper, you may be wondering what in the heck that is in the hive.  It's fondant.  If you're not a baker, you may have seen fondant on any one of the number of shows like "Cake Boss" where they make those ridiculously large cakes that look like dragons and sailboats and such.  It's a kind of icing that can be rolled out and used to cover cakes, and is made of a variety of different things depending on where you get it and what quality it is, but the primary ingredient here is powdered sugar.  The bees eat the fondant as their honey stores are depleted, helping to keep them alive through the winter months.

Fast forward back to the present, and the bees have been munching on it pretty well.  They weren't quite out of stores before, but I wanted to be proactive, knowing that it might be awhile before I could get back into the hives to check and feed them if necessary, so they haven't eaten a ton of the fondant. It's hard to see in the pictures, but on most of the pieces the edges have been rounded out and smoothed down as they work on it.  In the coming weeks, the fondant will disappear a bit more rapidly, but I'm hopeful that we are out of the worst of winter, and they'll will make it through.

These pictures only came from the hive that was the weaker of the two, though the strong hive is doing fine as well, and is a bit better off.  They still have a lot of capped honey, and likely won't need the little bit of fondant I gave them as an insurance policy.  As always, I like to leave you with a close up picture from the hive, and you'll find the ladies munching away at the fondant below, "Like a (Cake) Boss."