They're alive! I'm Alive...

Yesterday was -5C and with the wind it felt like -10C. It was pretty miserable. But today was absolutely beautiful! It was not very windy and I saw the temperature get up to +14C! What a difference. The bees noticed the change of weather as well.

I've been neglecting the blog because I have not been a ble to get into the hives and see the girls. But today I was able to finally get my head back into the hives.

Snow almost gone, bees everywhere.

They were out and about.

A bit closer view of the bees going for cleansing flights and cleaning out the dead.

All the hives were active. No dead hives!

Insane weather. It looks like the bees are going to get out this week.

My other 2 hives at my parents place apparently were quite busy as well. That means that all 6 of my hives have made it through the winter! I opened up a couple of hives and they were heavy with honey still, which is excellent. I definitely do not want to start feeding them.

I do not have any extra equipment, so I am going to have to start getting that together so that I can make splits in the spring. My problem with making splits is that I will have too many hives to manage. Six hives is plenty of work for me; this is a hobby... isn't it? Also, if my hives do as well this year as they did last year (210 lbs per hive), then I would be doomed! How do you sell so much honey?!?

Some activity! Bees flying around

Today we had one of the first "mild" days of the year where were saw temperatures around 8 deg C. Because of this temperature a couple of brave bees were able to get out of the hive and do some cleansing flights. I took the liberty to take off the mouse guards and scrape out any dead bees that had accumulated on the bottom board. This will make less work for the worker bees and make sure that they are not trapped in the hive with no way to get out.

Lots of snow melting around the yard.

Some bees checking out what is going on.

A pile of bees that were scrapped out from the bottom board.

A bee crawling back onto the bottom board after a cleansing flight.

All three hives at home seemed quite active. The two sheltered hives were just humming and the outside hive had lots of bees on the bottom board.

Winter is over!

Environment Canada is claiming that winter in south western Ontario is officially over. They have also said that it was the driest winter on record (in the last 63 yrs). This is setting things up for a bit of a disaster. I really hope that this is not a super dry summer or my bees are going to suffer; oh yeah, and it is going to also make farming more difficult.

As you can see from previous entries, at the begining of the week their was a lot of snow. In four days there is practically none left! Thanks to a large municipal drain that we installed last fall, I did not have to spend two days scooping up water in my basement and there is no standing water in my field.

The last 2 days have been super windy! I went out to check my hives and to my surprise, this is what I saw. The wind popped out one peg. I popped it back in and things were fine. I am quite happy with my little trellis. It blocks the wind so well and I really think it is necessary due to the location. The sides need to be touched up a bit. The replacement wood pieces for the sides and back are made but need to be stained and installed. I figured I could do that in the spring time so that they would be less weathered.

Major Cleansing

Today was another beautiful day; similar to the last two days except that it was 11C which is above that magic temperature where every bee comes out and goes for a cleansing flight.

This picture has my two hives in the background. If you click on it to view in larger, you can literally see the thousands of little dimples in the snow. This picture was taken at the end of the day.

This is the front of my hive at around noon. As you can see, there is a lot of traffic. Less than an hour later, the hive beside was equally busy. The green hive cluster may be located such that they did not notice or took longer to realize that the weather was so nice; their entrance is also partially covered compared to the white hive.

The single box hives had the chance to get out and do their business. I had cleaned their entrances yesterday and I assume that it helped them.
What a great couple of days! The rest of the week is forecasting rain.

Single HIves' Cleansing Flights!

Another beautiful day (high of +7C) allowed my recently dug out single body hives to do a bit of spring cleaning and some cleansing flights. As you can see by the above picture, the left side hive was able to do more work than the right side. I lifted up the front flaps and the left side clearly had things cleared up.The right side seemed to be plugged up more with dead bees. I used a thin bladed knife and scrapped out the bees and I cleared up their entrance and a couple even came out to check what was going on. Another nice day will allow them to come out and take their flights.

In continuing with yesterdays immature jokes, here is a picture of most of the possible bee poops. The blob, the straight line, the squiggly line and the dotted line. The bees must have rested on the roof of the hive and done their business.

Some people may question my assistance to my bees but I do it because I only have two full hives and two single box hives. My one single box hive is a swarm that I caught at the end of August. Another beekeeper told me that it would be impossible for them to survive the winter; I donated some of frames from my strong colonies to it and I fed it sugar syrup like crazy. All my hives are looking like they have made it through the winter.

Cleansing Flights!

There was a lot of activity coming from the green hive.  The green hive is wrapped up in a “Bee Cozy” winter wrap. It is like putting a down jacket on your hive and the best thing about it is that it literally takes less than a minute to throw it on. I am super impressed with it; it looks like the bees are happy with it as well. Today there were a lot of bees flying around in front of the hive and cleansing themselves. For those of you who do not have snow as a backdrop to see what bee poop looks like, then I guess you are in luck.

This picture shows a typical spotting of a bee. It has had some time to melt in the snow. Alright, that is enough of that. The reason was checking my hives was to see if they were doing well and taking their flights. It is also important to see if there are any potential issues; such as nosema. Nosema is a unicellular parasite which is now classified as a fungus. Beekeeping for Dummies is wrong / my issue may be out of date! Anyways, Nosema symptoms include bees appearing weak and crawl aimlessly around the front of the hive. Also the hive will have streaks of mustard-brown feces that appear in and on the hive. Beekeeping for Dummies suggests placing your hive at a site which has good airflow and a nearby source of fresh, clean water to avoid Nosema issues.

The perspective from the top of the hive shows all of the yellow snow. Another beekeeper once called it yellow rain; I think it is very fitting. You can also see how much snow is still left in my young orchard. There is 3 feet in some areas. I also took the time today to dig out my single boxes; which were completely buried in the snow again. I hope it allows them to get out a bit and clean up their hives.