Fed The Lang Girls Today

The sun came out today and the bees did too. I didnt know how quickly they might go through their stores with all the cool and rainy days forecast, so I decided to take the opportunity to quickly swap a frame out for the feeder. I put in a bunch of chopped up styrofoam egg carton pieces for them to stand on because I thought it would be more hygienic than wood chips. However when I poured in the syrup all the little rafts gathered at one end leaving a dangerous open lake at the other, so I grabbed some little birch twigs and broke 'em up and threw 'em in there. So much for hygiene, but at least there is less danger of anyone falling in and drowning.

I gave them about 3 liters of 1:1 syrup so if they have to stay inside for the next week or so I am certain their pantry won't go empty. It will be interesting to see how quickly they go through that much syrup.
After I closed up the hive they all went back inside as a cloud went in front of the sun.


The barn bees were flying with a good bit of traffic at the door, I saw a few baskets full of bright orange pollen (I'm pretty sure it is crocus).

Spring Inspection March 2012

Opened both hives yesterday, March 24, 2012.

 Here is the natural comb of the Bee Barn:

Here is the bottom floor of the Barn:

In the Langstroth hive there was a very large grapefruit sized cluster of bees in the top box. I didnt see the queen, and I didnt actually see or recognize any brood, but I am going to assume She is there and despite losses they will come back if given a chance. Looking through the frames on the top box I saw one patch of capped honey that was maybe a third of a frame, and elsewhere there were some cells full of nectar, and possibly a quarter frames' worth of pollen. To my inexperienced eye it looked like very little in the way of pantry stores.

There was also green mold growing on some pollen stored in an outside frame of plastic foundation. I tried to scrape some out but when I touched it a fine cloud of spores exploded out of it, and it was tough removing it.

Because of this I want to feed them some sugar syrup in the division board feeder, just to give them a little insurance.



In the bottom box I found horror:

There was some capped honey 

but the other side of this frame had a lot of white filled cells. I don't know what it is, is it good or bad? I poked a few with a stick and I thought one of them had a small amount of pollen, but couldnt be sure.

In the middle frames there were many dead drones and lots of fluffy mold.

Why were there dead drones inside?

Look at this frame.

Sorry its not a great picture but notice the size of cells at the top compared to the size further down. This is a frame (of two) I put a "starter strip" of  wax foundation at the top and let the bees fill in the rest. You can see they began making bigger sized cells. this may have something to do with last year's the very large drone population.

So my plan for the langstroth hive is to feed them some syrup, and try to get another clean unbroken deep box from the stuff in the shed, with clean frames and fresh foundation. While they are filling up two deep boxes with brood and honey, then the situation of the supers can be worked out.

Bringing back March Pollen

 

Death of the new hive... a guilty post-mortem

I am terribly sad to say that I'm not a bee-keeper, but a bee-killer. Opened the new hive up today, clearly far too late this spring for such a young hive, such a warm winter, and it is tragic to report but they have all died, starved to death it seems. There is a large pile of bodies and many were head-down, trying to scrape out the last of the honey at the bottom of the comb when they died. Clearly, my ignorance and lack of experience is the cause, I should have realized that they didn't have enough stores to go so long, but it is sheer stupidity that I now bitterly regret that I didn't open up the new hive earlier.... I had checked in on the "mother" hive in early February and they seemed to be doing well with lots of honey left, but this new one didn't have the same back-ups, and I should have been feeding them probably back as early as January. I am so sorry to everyone concerned.