February hive check
When
I last checked on our honeybees,
a little over a month ago, I was a bit concerned that one hive might
not have enough honey to make it through the winter. The one I
worried about was a healthy hive, but I'd made the mistake of combining
a very weak hive with the stronger hive that fall,
and I think the double dose of workers ate through their honey stores
very rapidly. I knew that our strongest hive had honey to spare,
but I decided to wait until February to do anything about it.
February came in like a
lion, and just kept roaring for most of the month. The weather
was far too chilly to get into that hive, and I started worrying (and
having nightmares about starving bees.) So when Friday warmed up,
the bees were at the top of my agenda.
I opened up the hives,
and was shocked to see that all three seemed to have nearly as much
honey as had been there a month ago! I can't quite figure out why
they ate masses of honey in December, but very little in January ---
maybe they finally killed off their summer workers in the interim and
had fewer mouths to feed? Maybe the sugar water they were still
evaporating from my late fall feedings had been turned into
honey? No matter --- I needn't have been concerned. Just to
keep the nightmares at bay, I moved a few frames of honey from the
strongest hives to the other two hives, even though now I didn't think
they would need it.
Meanwhile,
the bees were so pleased by the weekend's balmy weather that they went
out foraging. They kept coming by and visiting with me as I
played in the woods --- one buzzed around me at the ford (a fourth of a
mile from the hives) and another landed on my notebook as I read in the
woods Saturday (maybe even a little further away, on the top of a tall
hill.) Granted, my visitors could have been wild bees, but they
seemed extraordinarily tame, and almost interested in me. Or
maybe it was the smell of recently peeled orange on my hands....
I wonder if they found the witch hazel
blooming on the
north side of the property and had a winter snack?
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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I absolutely love bees and all of their bumbling relatives. I like to chat with them too, even if it seems one-sided
Glad yours are doing well. It is neat that they came to visit and it sounds like you sure enjoyed the nice day.