March 28th Hive check

3/28/22

Very warm day for the end of March. Typical spring in Colorado. Tomorrow it will be cold and rainy. First full hive check of the year. I pulled all the frames out and inspected almost all of them. Found all of the queens in all hives and all looked healthy.

Hive 1 has 3 deeps and 1 super. This is a lot of space for a hive. In the fall, I combined two decent-sized hives together due to a failing queen in one. Decided to overwinter them together and end up with 1 massive hive in the spring. My plan is working, which doesn’t always happen. They have eaten through all the sugar cap that I have put on twice. Since the weather is warm and the flowers are blooming I decided not to put another sugar cap on. There are bees in all boxes with the bottom deep being a little sparse. Found queen in first deep. I rotated the boxes so that the bottom box is now on the top, giving the queen more room to lay. They are starting to lay drones, and there are lots of nurse bees with a lot of brood, so I plan to check them again in a week and probably split them in about 3 weeks before they swarm. Uncapped some drone comb and one had 3 mites. Will split as a natural mite treatment.

Hive 2 looks good. Overwintered with a super. Ate through the sugar cap that I filled twice. Found queen in the first deep. A lot of bees in the super and top deep. Rotated the two brood boxes so the queen moves up. Bottom deep was sparse. Lots of room for the queen to lay and ease swarm pressure. Had some drone comb.

Hive 3 looks good. Maybe my strongest. Ate through half of the sugar cap that I put on. I left some sugar when I closed it up. Overwintered with 2 supers and 1 deep. Found queen in second super and she is laying in both supers. A lot of brood and some hatched-out drones. The bottom deep is sparse. Put the 2 supers on the bottom with the queen in the top super with the deep on top. I will check again in a week to see if there are queen cells.

Hive 4 is small. Still working on filling out empty frames. Still have a decent amount of space. Eating through the sugar cap which I left on for them. Smallest hive but thankful they made it through the winter. Did not see any drones or drone comb. It will be about a month before I put on a super but we will see. I will check this hive in about 2 weeks.

Left bottom board in all hives and an insulation cover on top of all hive covers.

Thanks for reading. X

March 1st hive check

3/1

Very warm March 1st day. Checked on the bees this afternoon around 1 pm. 69 degrees. There is still some snow on the ground. Checking bees in March in Colorado is weird. It’s typically anyone’s guess as to what the weather will be. There will likely be more snow and cold weather coming our way. February and March are usually when hives starve to death so it’s really important to check that the bees have enough stored during the next few weeks.

This was my first hive check this year. When I open the hive I can feel the electricity of spring. The bees are reproducing so quickly this time of year. The Silver Maple trees are the first pollen source for honeybees and they are starting to bring it in. No flowers are blooming just yet.

I currently have 4 hives and all but 1 have moved up to the top of the hive and are eating the sugar cap I put on in late fall. I added another layer of newspaper and poured more sugar in. Didn’t pull any frames out just yet. Didn’t feel warm enough and didn’t want to break the sugar cap. We are looking at more snow next week and highs in the teens during the day. Super cold at night.

For winter feeding, I use the Mountian Camp Sugar Method. When I close the hives up for winter, I put 2 layers of newspaper over the brood nest. I place a 1-inch spacer on top of the newspaper and pour as much pure cane sugar that will fit in the spacer. Then the inner cover is followed by the telescoping lid. I have been using this method for years and I swear by it. Not only is it insurance that the bees won’t starve, but it also adds as an insulator and absorbs moisture. When the humidity in the hive builds up, the sugar absorbs the moisture and turns the sugar into hard candy. If the bees run low on honey, they can use the sugar if they need it.

Will do another hive check when the weather warms up. Really looking forward to seeing what the bees will do this year:)

Thanks for reading. X

Bee Nerds Unite

Welcome to my blog. Is anyone out there?

Here is the place where I hope to post my hopes and dreams for my bees and your bees and all the bees out there. This is a place to share and ask questions and we can come up with ideas together. I want this blog to be perfectly imperfect. If you are judgy please move along.

I will be posting about a year in the life of a beekeeper and details on each of my hive inspections. I am hoping to post 2 times per month, but ya know, life, it’s busy.

I have worked as a professional beekeeper for the last 10 years and have had hives for 13 years. I can honestly tell you the struggle with keeping bees alive is real. It’s damn hard work. There have been moments of immense joy and other moments of shear heartbreak. If more of us decide to keep bees, help bees, plant pollinator friendly gardens with not neonicotinoid soaked flowers, and more of us care about this planet, maybe we can turn things around. Things are bad out there folks. Let’s do this together.