Day 3 After Installing Packages

The weather has not been the best for bees.  We have seen record low temperatures for the high with the temperature barely breaking 40F.  Yesterday it snowed and hailed and there was no activity around the hives.  Today the high temperature was 46F and there was some activity around L3 and T3 but none around the other three hives.  I wanted to check to insure that the queens have been released from their marshmallow plugged cages but we did not want to break into the clusters.

While checking on the hives I noticed a lot of ants around L2 and a few around T2 which are located next to each other.  Ellen did a quick check on the Internet to see what could be done and came up with wood ash and cinnamon as possible ways to mitigate the problem.  Since we have a wood furnace and cinnamon in the cupboard we decided to see if these would actually work against ants.  I put the ash can in a wheelbarrow and Ellen grabbed the cinnamon and we headed back to the hives. 

First we slid the top lid aside enough to check the frame feeder on L2 and found it full of ants so we brushed ants off of the feeder and the hive as well as we could without opening the hive completely.  We did hear a nice hum coming from inside which is a reassuring sound even if the bees are not flying.  I shoveled wood ash around the base of the hive stand on L2 and did the same on T2 even though ants did not appear to be a problem on the TBH.  Ellen sprinkled some cinnamon around L2 for good measure. Ants only seemed to be a problem on one hive but that may only be because they have not found the other four hives.  I will check tomorrow to see if these ant "remedies" worked.  I posted pictures of the ants and hives at https://picasaweb.google.com/miller.jrm/Bees .

We did notice that L3-T3 had some flying bees and checked the hives for ants and found none but we did find that they are taking the 1:1 syrup but the bees in L2-T2 and T1 did not seem to be taking any syrup.  The hives are only a 100 yards apart and on the same side of a ridge but it still makes us wonder if the micro climate might be just a little warmer in the L3-T3 location.

I took at look at the inside of T3 through the observation window and noticed the the bees are hanging in a cluster around the queen cage location.  I tried to take a picture of the cluster but it is not great through the glass and inside a dim interior but I posted it anyway. When I opened the feeder on T3 it was full of bees which flew up, so I quickly closed the lid.  The weather is forecast to warm up this weekend and I hope to bee able to check on the queens.  As I look outside just now, it is snowing again.

Jack