Winter Hive inspection (Part 1 of 2)

The weather has been fairly cooperative for the last couple of days. Yesterday there was a high of +2C and my one hive had been doing some spring cleaning. I could tell because there were a lot of bees scattered in front of the entrance and even 20 feet away. I assume this is because the snow is fairly crusted and that the bodies easily slide across it.

 This morning was cloudless and windless and the sun was really beating down. The temperature was still only -2C. I thought it would be a perfect time to open up my homemade mouse guard / entrance reducer and scrap out the dead bees with a thin piece of wood.

My two full-sized hives had very different amounts of dead bees. My strongest hive had a significant amount more of dead bees and it also has been the most active. This picture shows the different amounts of dead bees that I cleared out. I took the dead bees and threw them with my shovel. I would say that the larger hive had five times more. Maybe the smaller amount of dead bees did not have all of their dead "at their doorstep" so I was not able to quickly scrape them out.

 The interesting thing about this hive is that it went into its winter cluster much later than all of my other hives. It also had a massive population later into the fall. It would take in 4 liters of syrup in 24 hrs. The hive also was very heavy with honey stores but I kept feeding them anyways. Another possibility with the large difference of the winter kill may be the fact that they have different winter wraps (but I have my doubts because both wraps have an equal insulation(R) value; one is just much quicker to put on). The homemade wrap is on the hive which experienced the higher amount of death. The other hive has a bee cozy wrap on (Which was slick to install!).

Later in the afternoon there were bees from both hives going out for cleansing flights and the temperature was only +3C! They must have really had to go to venture out in that “cold”. Some bees landed on the snow and then would fly around a bit more and then return to their hive.

I also checked my buried single box hives. They are both alive! I will include details and pictures in Part2!