Sunday, March 15, 2015

Flowering Trees

While observing the hives yesterday, I noticed a bee or two with pollen as they re-entered the hive. Here in southern/central Indiana, we must have some trees flowering.

Rose seems very strong, and has cleaned out a lot of dead bees since last week. Cleaning house is a good sign.

Rose is also taking a lot of syrup, because both pint jars were empty when I checked the feeder.

Lavender has only consumed about 1pint of syrup, but they were still moving pollen in, and while they don't seem to be as strong as Rose, they're still holding on.

Neither hive seems to be eating much of the pollen substitute I gave them last week, but I'm guessing that's because they have natural pollen to use for raising brood.

Hopefully either today or next weekend, I'll be doing some work on Lavender to get the colony moved out of the super. I'll try to get some pictures of that process when I do.

Sunday, March 8, 2015

Spring?

We are so thrilled, and so very lucky, to announce that we seem to have a 100% survival rate! If they don't make it now, it will most likely be due to starvation. So today I fed each hive. In each feeder box, there is quart of one-to-one syrup and a large, homemade pollen patty, made from Bee Pro pollen substitute mixed with some extra one-to-one syrup.