1st Inspection: Everything looks good...so far

I have been super busy on the farm and at work these days but I took a half hour to take a look inside some of my hives at home and here are the pictures I got. Unfortunately my camera had to use flash, if not I think the pictures would have turned out better.

Queen & entourage

I found the queen and she relaxed and started laying. So, take a look at her and her group of bees. It was quite the sight. I have not had the chance to witness this too many times, glad I got to take some photos.

Queen with abdomen down in cell, laying down an egg.

So I found the queen in my first two hives. For the second hive, I actually found her on the first frame I pulled out!
My top boxes also seemed to still be quite heavy with honey. This is a mostly good thing. I imagine that the weather is going to get cooler again. We are breaking records in my area. The average temperature for this time of year is 5C; and we have just had 3 days in a row with above 25C! Just crazy. The bees are loving it, and so are farmers. We are itching to get out in the fields.

In my third hive, I could not find the queen but I did find some tell tale signs of her.

Larvae on comb between the boxes

Capped cells and various stages around

Day old eggs! Can you spot them?

I am so far very impressed with my girls. They have a very early start on the year. Unfortunately I have not been able to keep up with the equipment, so I am going to have to put in a couple of days building more frames, bottom boards, inner covers so that I can prepare for splitting the hives.

First Pollen!

The bees were bringing in their first pollen of the year. And these photos are from March 16th!


Mouse guards knocking pollen sacs off! Opps.

Opened the lid of a hive

Last year they started collecting pollen April 9th, and I thought that was earlier. It is going to be an interesting season!

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?!?