It has been three weeks and a lot of cold weather. I and Ellen left for 5 days to try to see the launch of the shuttle Endeavor and were disappointed that the launch was scrubbed. When we left the hives seemed to be OK but behind because of the cold and we were concerned about one of the top bar hives which did not seem to be taking the syrup. When we checked on them when we returned home we found that that hive was dead. Just a pile of bees in the bottom of the hive. Apparently the bees starved to death by staying in their cluster while the syrup supply was just three inches away. If we were to see this situation again we would try putting candy board right over the top of the cluster.
The weather is now in the 50's and on 2 days it hit 60 for an hour or so and the bees are taking advantage of the better weather in a big way. They are going through about a gallon of syrup every 3 days. The picture above is of T1 which has pulled comb and sealed brood on 5 top bars. We added 4 top bars to the hive to give them more room. T2 is the hive we lost. L2 has 3 frames of sealed brood. T3 has 5 top bars of sealed brood and we added 3 top bars to that hive. L3 has 5 frames of sealed brood.
The issue now is timing. The hives are building fast and we want a strong hive for the honey flow but if a hive gets to strong ahead of the honey flow we could lose a large portion of the bees to swarming. We will be inspecting regularly for swarm cells and too insure that the hives have space to expand.
I and Ellen and another couple from the West Plains Beekeeping Association spent 3 hours this morning in front of Jarms, a local hardware store, talking to those interested in bees. It was a bit cool but people were curious and we had a good time.
Jack
