I went out and opened the hives.

Two hives were very dead. They must have frozen in the cold weather, because there was about 80 pounds of honey between them. The bees died inches from the honey, which meant that they were too cold to leave the winter ball of bees to find food. The good news is that I have lots of deep frames of honey to use in starting my bees this Spring.

I was stung for the first time in 2014 when I opened up the other hives. I had to go get a bee veil and gloves to wear. I put a frame of honey from the dead hives in each of the live hives so that they might have some more food for the coming cold days. There were lots of bees spread out over many frames so they must have been all right.

I will start feeding them in about three weeks. As soon as we get a few days where the sugar will not freeze I’ll start putting on front feeders  so they will think that the nectar flow has started and they will start in on making brood. If the nurse bees can keep the eggs and brood warm enough there should be an increase in the number of bees. It takes 21 days to grow a bee from egg to emergence from the comb. If I can have bees coming out near the end of March they will be ready for the early Spring flowers.

At the end of March my 3 packages should arrive. If the hives have strong populations I’ll call up and ask the bee girl to pick me up a couple of queens and I’ll split the two hives. I will try to keep the good strong queens (that lived through the winter) and use a few frames of bees for the new queen in a nearby hive. When you split a hive, the new hive must be right next to the old hive or the bees will all return to the original hive. The hives must be less than three feet or more than three miles apart, otherwise the bees remember their home.

With luck, I will start the year with seven hives.