Opening the Hives...

 The weekend here was beautiful and the bees were flying in and out, perfect time for an inspection. I tried to get some shots of them bringing in pollen but was quickly being watched by the guard bees sooooo, I got out of there and decided to suit up....

 During the inspection it was clear that hive "A" was fine, but soon realized that there was no activity in"B" which was active just a few weeks ago. I soon learned that we had lost them. It seems they died from too much moisture in the hive. There were over 2000 bees dead, very sad. We knew we had lost "C" early in the winter.

 If you see the bigger bee with the yellow dot on her back, that is the queen! She is checking for cells that are empty and worthy of laying her eggs. In the upper cells you can see where she has already laid and they will cap it in a few days. The workers were busy cleaning and bringing in pollen. It is officially spring, the bees are back to work...

 In this picture, you can see the queen, workers and pollen in the cells. Just after I took this picture she dropped her abdomen in the cell and laid an egg! So our plan for the next coming weeks is to watch this hive. When we get into the next few weeks we will make a split from this hive to re-stock hive "B" and make a split from the Observation Hive at the Nature Center and re-hive both these hives. The is how hive "A" was produced last year which happened to be the only hive other than the Observation Hive to come through this brutal winter that we had.

The feeder was added to the hive with sugar, water and Honey-B-Healthy to boosts their immune systems as well as getting them fed while they are waking up and getting to the business of living!