Our long winter is over and it is so nice to have some warmer weather. Some new bees arrived to replace some of my heavy winter losses and they are off to a good start. I was able to put the new packages into the dead hives(after cleaning them) so they had lots of stores to get them started.

I lost hives due to mites over the winter, I chose not to treat for mites and as a result many didn’t make it through. It is discouraging when your bees die but this wasn’t totally unexpected,  the bright side is I have tons of stores and drawn comb for this years bees. We had a colder and longer winter this year so I’m sure that was a factor also in my overwintering numbers.

So will I continue trying to be treatment free? Yes I will keep trying and heading in that direction,  I will work on building my numbers up and keep trying to have nucs go through the winter so I can replace my losses.

It’s been cold here in Sutton this month with some long periods of cold. I have been seeing dead bees in the snow on very cold days that are in the single numbers or the teens. It should be too cold for the girls to fly but none the less a few seem to appear each day.

It appears that more bees come from a few of the hives rather than all of the hives. I am not sure what the cause is but I am guessing that they may be old or sick bees. The optimist in me says that at least their are live bees left to fly out from the hives. The pessimist says that there won’t be any bees left by spring!

Be patient while I get some content on here. Meanwhile contact me at John@bakerhillapiary.com