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