My Photos

The Beginning Beekeeper, Photos, Photos II, Bees at 5 1/2 weeks, 7/18/14, New Queens, Honey Harvest, Winter Prep. Second Year 4/1/15, Update 5/26/15, 9/12/15 Something New. 11/12/15 Winter Prep. 11/20/15 January 30, 2016 Spring 2016 March 2017 My Photos

March 2017

Here are some recent photo's of our hives. We, as of right now, have 9 hives as they went into winter. We lost one hive last summer due to laying workers. I missed that a virgin queen didn't come back from her mating flights. I decided not to use any resources from other hives to attempt to save this hive because they all had swarmed, as did this one, and I wanted them to build up for the winter. 

This was our weakest hive going into winter. It looks pretty much the same now as it did in November

This hive's strength looks deceptive in this photo. Most of the bees are down in the hive rather than on top of the frames. All of these hives are being fed sugar bricks. Most of these pictures show a hive just before a new sugar brick was installed.

Here you see a partial sugar brick and lots of bees. This hive has the bees feeding heavily on an older brick and what remains of the original from December installation.

This is another full hive with bees up on top of the frames. I removed a small piece of sugar brick & am going to replace it with a new one.

Here's another good hive so far. We have another month+ before we can relax about the bees surviving winter. We can then start attending to the warm weather needs.

This is a typical example of one of our three 10 frame hives. It looks good. They are located on the new property. We've got 3 up-coming nights with temperatures in the low to mid teens. It will be a real test for some of the weaker hives. It was unseasonally warm prior to this upcoming cold. We will probably lose a lot of the early blooming flowers like maple and snowdrops.