Quick Bee Update

This past Sunday I decided to do a quick check on my two bee hives. The bees are alive in one of my hives! When I bent down to press my ear against the side of the hive I could hear healthy buzzing! This is a huge accomplishment ~ for them! I feel like a proud momma. The temperature is still hovering in the 30's but the days have been bright & sunny so the temperature in the hive is probably fairly cozy.

I cleaned & re-filled the top feeder with syrup but now I've learned that that will probably add too much moisture. Moisture is bad, very bad, in the winter. So later today in the warmth of the sun, I went out to remove the top feeder & instead give them granulated sugar & a pollen patty. Yumm, doesn't that sound good? Here's a picture of the top of the frames & a pollen patty being put on top. The bees were very active & came right up to see what was going on.

On the right is a picture of the bees from my other hive. Unfortunately they were not healthy & it looks like they died some time ago. This hive was always very chaotic & aggressive. They swarmed around July & then raised a new queen. I let them continue on this path and thought I'd try to help get them ready for the winter. The upper brood box was full of dead bees eventhough there was 4 or 5 frames full of honey. I cleaned out the frames & dumped the corpses on the snow ~ food for the birds! It's been a feast in my front yard today.