Resilient Bees

My friend and beekeeping mentor Robert Pierce called me today with excitement in his voice. The bees in his top-bar hive were flying around outside! They made it through the long, cold winter! With the warm weather that we were blessed with today, Robert encouraged me to go check my bees. I had a faint optimism that maybe one of the colonies survived. So when I got home from work I marched over the cold and muddy ground and up through the woods to the farm where my hives are.

There on the far side of the field the hives stood like three strange monoliths. I knew one of the colonies was dead for sure because it had been taken over by hornets in the fall for some reason. The other two were not the strongest colonies so I had left the majority of the honey they produced last summer and fall for them to consume over the winter in hopes that it would give them a chance to survive.

As I got about 100 feet away from the hives, my heart jumped as I clearly could see little dots zooming all around one of the hives! When I approached the hive up close I sensed that they were strong and vigorous, yet eager to find more food. There were bees coming and going, no doubt scouting for pollen and nectar. I was so happy and amazed at the site!

My next step will be to check their honey supplies. If they have a fair amount still, I probably will do nothing more than occasionally check on them. If they are low on honey, I'd like to feed them some syrup that I made with cane sugar and water. There are a number of ways to feed bees syrup.

I also need to clean up the other two hives and see if they are still habitable for a new colony. I suspect that the hive that was overrun with hornets had been weakened by mites earlier and if that's the case, it's not wise to re-use that hive because it can infect the next colony to live there. I'm pretty sure that the third colony perished over the winter but I did see some bees around it - possibly bees from the active hive checking to see if there was any honey in it. If everything looks good in the empty hives, I'd like to invite new colonies into them this spring and also expand to two additional hives as well.

Lord willing, it will be a great year for bees, pollination and honey!