You may have heard via Twitter or Facebook that one of our hives did not survive the winter. I suspect it was queen failure. There are plenty of frames of honey left, and the empty brood frames were EMPTY – no dead bees or larvae (which might indicate disease). Did I accidentally kill her during my last fall inspection? Or was she weak and just didn’t live very far into the winter? I may never know. But what do I do with all these frames with honey in them? They looked dark, almost black, but i tasted some and it was fine. I took one to the other hive thinking they’d be short on food by now, but they still have 1/3-1/2 of a box full of honey. So I took it inside to see if I could harvest the honey. As I started scraping, I noticed that I couldn’t scrape all the way to the bottom and some clusters of cells were full of powder – POLLEN? You don’t find that much pollen in a frame of capped honey during the summer, so why was this honey so full of pollen? I couldn’t find much reference to it online, but did discover a few discussions which suggested that for winter storage of pollen, they put it into open cells as they normally would, but then cover it with honey and cap it. Putting up for winter, I suppose. They need a lot of pollen (protein) as well as honey to survive the winter. I’m not sure what to do with all the honey left in that empty hive. I suppose I could start putting them in the other hive as they run low instead of using the sugar water feed typically used in spring. If there are any experienced beekeepers out there reading this, I sure would appreciate your input!

It’s been a week since we picked up and installed the bees. I look at them every day. Sometimes I go out early when it’s still cold (no bee suit required) and lift up the feeder pails to make sure they’re eating. Sometimes we just sit and watch them buzz around from afar (“I wanna go see da bees”, says 3yo). I haven’t suited up and opened the hives completely to make sure the queen is laying eggs, though, which is recommended within the first 4-7 days. It’s been too cold or windy to disturb them, but today was a little warmer, so I decided it was time. They seem to be doing well: drawn out comb, eggs in both hives, pollen present, foragers arriving with more pollen. I was a little shocked by the bright orange in the cells, but according to Wikipedia Pollen Source it’s probably dandelion pollen, which makes sense since they are the predominant pollen source at the moment.

I could watch them all day, but they have work do to and so do I. See you again in about 10 days, girls!