First Hive Inspection of 2014

Weather: mostly sunny, ~55°F, light breeze

Goals: pull dead hives, perform postmortem, inspect live colonies and feed

from L to R: Clover, Thistle, Dill, Wisteria, SG Split, SG Hive

Upon entering the bee yard we noticed activity in four of our six hives, no change from the previous week. Our first task was to pull the dead hives, Thistle and the SG Split. What we found was the same in both of them, good size cluster of dead bees, no food stores - starvation.  Starvation is solely the fault of the beekeeper, in my opinion.  These dead hives were my fault for not ensuring they had enough provisions for the winter.

SG Split

Some keepers look for "survivor bees" and never feed or treat their bees, survival of the fittest so to speak. I tend to look at them like livestock, since they are an introduced species to N. America, I feed and treat when necessary, but only split (breed) the healthiest stock.  When I make splits this year I will use the strongest colonies that came through the winter.  I will still feed and treat the weaker colonies, and may requeen them with queens from stronger stock, in hopes of making the colonies stronger.

Dill - cleaned the bottom board, rotated the brood boxes, found two frames with a small patch of brood surrounded by lots of eggs, fed a pollen patty and a winter patty.  Not a strong colony at this point, but calm, made it through the winter, and are starting the spring build up.

Wisteria - found the marked queen (from last summer/fall) in the bottom box with at least four frames of brood, eggs and larvae; so I didn't rotate the boxes. Fed winter and pollen patties.

Clover and SG Hives - added pollen and winter patties. No inspection.

Spent some time cleaning frames and boxes.  Found a frame from Thistle with five started supersedure cells on it. Thistle is the hive I thought had gone queenless last summer, purchased a queen and then ended up creating the Wisteria split when the queen (virgin queen returned from a mating flight?) reappeared. Did this have anything to do with the loss of Thistle? I don't know.

Last summer when Hannah created her split we gave her a medium frame of honey to add to her nuc. When she moved her split from the nuc to the hive we didn't pull out the medium frame and the girls build some very interesting comb to fill the space under the medium.