Happy New Year 2014

Jan 5, 2014

Happy New Year to all of you!  I haven't written since August.  Apologies!  I am looking out the window at a grey day with falling snow that threatens to continue all day long.  We have just gone through a cold snap that saw the temperatures during the day go as low as minus 26  (centigrade) with the wind chill.  Brrr.  No bees to be seen during that time but as soon as it warmed up to minus 2, the bees came out for cleansing flights and clearing out their dead.  There were about 10 bees dead in the snow outside of the hives after this.

These are the little signs that let me know that there is still life in the hives.  Another sign that gives me hope is the melting of the snow around the opening that shows that the bees are heating the cluster.

Heavy snowfall on the hives in November 2013.  Melted snow around openings.

Here's a little update on the state of each hive and what we can expect from them in the spring.

Queen Mab II:  This hive started with an Ontario queen, was doing very well and decided to swarm in June last summer.  I let her build her own queen and rebuild the hive on her own since there were no queens to be had and it was still early enough in the season.  I did not take any honey from her last summer.  So Queen Mab II is a new  Ontario queen and will be about 3/4 year old in the spring.  She should be fairly robust in numbers.

Queen Olivia:  This hive started with an Australian queen and was the star hive last summer.  She never showed any interest in swarming and built up very quickly.  I took about 3 frames of honey to harvest from her.  She is going into the new season with a mature queen so I will have to watch her carefully to make sure she doesn't swarm.  I will probably have to do a split very early in the spring.

Queen Sangria:  This is my experimental hive.  She is made up of a queen from one of the swarm cells from Queen Mab that I took when she was making queens  I added bees and brood from Queen Olivia.  To keep her fed through the winter I gave her a full box of capped honey from Queen Olivia.  I could have harvested all of that for us but instead I am buying honey from the market!  Queen Sangria is a new Ontario queen and will be the same age as Queen Mab II but will not be near as robust.  It will be amazing if she makes it through this long, cold winter but it will be a good experiment regardless of the outcome.

I will be spending the next three months preparing boxes for the splitting of the hives, with the help of my handy husband, Bill.  My challenge is to avoid any swarming this coming spring...at least of my own bees!  

So  now we  wait for spring.  I keep the bird feeders full of seed for the juncos, woodpeckers, cardinals, chickadees, sparrows, nut hatches and mourning doves that visit the back yard every day.  Sometimes we see a skunk or opossum slide through the snow drifts and of course, dozens of grey and black squirrels.  Recently, it was so cold, I couldn't see through the frost on the window of the back door so I took a picture with my very cool new macro lens on my I-phone.

Macro picture of fern-like frost on the back window.

This is what I see when the window is not covered with frost, taken with the very cool fish-eye lens on my I-phone.

Snow bound Ontario

I wish you all the best in this brand new 2014!