The temperature went up above 50F today and the bees were all out an about and making noise. I put the wooden Brushy Mountain Bee Farm feeders on top of both hives, but I left the spacer in place because there was still a lot of pollen patties that were half eaten. I’ll take them off next week.
The good news is that when I opened up Martha, there were lots of very active bees. I thought that she would be dead. She only had the one hive body of honey to make it through the winter and I thought that it was mostly empty from being robbed.
I took this video:
Bee Hive March 6, 2010 from Keith Graham on Vimeo.
As you can see there is lots of buzzing around and it might be the other hive robbing what is left, but I tend to think it is mostly Martha waking up from her long winter sleep.
Both hives have about a quart and a half of sugar water (about 3 pounds of sugar each). I will mix up some more and feed them during the week if I have time. The top feeders hold a gallon or more each.
I took a video of Connie, the healthy hive. (For some reason I called her Ethel in the video. Ethel is the hive that died last fall.)
Bee Hive on March 6, 2010 from Keith Graham on Vimeo.
