It has been dark in the morning when I go to work and dark at night when I come home. In the other seasons, I always walk around the hives to see if they are having any problems. Lately, I only have time for a quick check on the weekend.
Today, Christmas Eve day, I walked back and pulled the entrance reducers off of each hive to discover hundreds of dead bees. The Italians, Justine and Ethel, had the most dead bees. They appeared fresh, as though they had died in the last day or so. I hope they are healthy and this is just the outer bees in the ball dying off.
It has not gone above freezing in weeks so the bees cannot take cleansing flights, and I can’t open the top to check on them.
I tipped each hive to see how much they weighed. A hive with good stores will be heavy and a hive light on honey will be light and easy to tip. Martha and Connie seemed heavy. Justine and Ethel seemed light. It is too cold to put in pollen patties or fill a feeder with damp sugar. As soon as the weather goes above 50°F, I will give them all a winter feeding, just in case.
Martha, the Russian did not have dead bees, but an animal had pulled out the entrance reducer. Either this is a good sign, or else an opossum is eating the bees. Connie, the strong Russian/Italian hive had dead bees, but not as many as the Italians. Connie went into the winter with a lower population than she did last year. Russians are like that, but I hope she has enough spare bees to make it through the winter.
I have to decide next week how many packages I should order for next spring. If I underestimate I will have only two or three hives next year. If I overestimate I will have to buy new hives for the spring to house the extra packages. I bought two packages last year, one to replace the original Ethel and one just in case (Justine), which I put into a new box.
So far, the winter has been much colder than last year. Last year the bees were hardly stressed, except for January. It has been mostly below freezing since before Thanksgiving here (lower Hudson Valley). It is hard on the bees, and there is little I can do about it.
