Today the high was 56 in Northeast Ohio, so it was time to check on the bees. When I went out in the afternoon, I saw bees flying happily in and out of the nuc I made in July from the Ohio Queen Program queen.
All of my other hives are dead now. I stopped up at the North hive yesterday to confirm the tiny cluster that was in there in November died off. It did. I took the remaining honey off the hive - about 40 pounds of mostly crystallized aster/goldenrod from fall. I put six of those frames on top of the nuc today to help it make it through.
I asked my Dad to take a look at the hive at his house (East) today also to see if they were flying. That hive looked really good in January when I had it open on a warm day. Unfortunately, they are also dead! How sad.
Being down to one hive out of five, I am wondering what approach I'll take in the Spring with bees. If the nuc makes it through the next month or two and can build up, I may be able to split it. Since both packages I bought last year are dead, I'm a little discouraged about packages from down South. I called a local pollination guy who sells bees to talk to him. He said he's seeing about 80% losses himself, and that's consistent with what other guys in the business are seeing up here this Winter. The weather just didn't cooperate last year. The dearth was too long, fall was too short, and bees couldn't brood up for Winter. He assured me that the problems last year were mostly due to weather, and that I should give packages a try again. I guess I have to think about that - at the very least, any package I buy at this point will get to build up on lots of already drawn foundation.
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