01-20-2013 Cold, warm, odd!

The last few days, temperatures have see-sawed from frost and a little snow to 68 (20 C) this afternoon. I must say that 68 feels good especially with no humidity and no mosquitoes (yet)

Just like last year, flowers are way ahead of schedule with Daffodils 

and Quince

about three weeks ahead of their "normal" bloom time. Around town, we see Redbuds, Cherries  and Magnolias already in bloom. This allows my bees to collect pollen; and they do. This afternoon, they were in full harvesting mode:

Notice yellow pollen on bees' legs.

I just hope the queen does not lay eggs yet because this will get very cold on Tuesday. While bees can wrap themselves around the queen and keep her warm on a cold night, they have no way to protect the eggs or pupae spread over several frames.

Veggies:
 
Still eating kale, escaroles, leeks and I still make chervil soup on a regular basis.
For the last few years, growing carrots has been a real challenge with lack of rain or warm seasons. This winter has been the perfect "summer" for carrots with nice temps and good, regular amount of rains. They come out of the ground nice and cool and with an amazing crunch.

Don't worry! I washed it before eating it within minutes, giving a new meaning to fresh food.

01-01-2013 Warm winter disaster!

The weather has been very pleasant around the Triangle, with hardly any frost and some absolutely gorgeous days: nice temps, low humidity and no mosquitoes. Better than Summer!

The "big one" on the right hand side and the "mean ones" on the left,higher up.

On the down side, my bees should all be hibernating, staying inside their hives keeping the queen warm and using this summer's honey storage to feed her and her subjects.

Unfortunately, every day I have enjoyed for its mild temps has been a day when my bees have been flying around, using up too much energy and too much stored food.

I have been feeding them additional sugar syrup to make up for the extra feeding and at the end of last week, on a pretty day, I opened each hive to verify their status and needs.

The first one I opened "the big hive" named for its size, has had a troubled history, barely surviving a similar pleasant winter last year with only about a third of its full strength which could have gone either way. Came Spring, its population rebounded in no time and increased magnificently, hence its larger size. Came late Fall and early Winter, it started showing stress again with a number of dead bodies dragged out every morning for me to see and dispose of. I could tell the queen was troubled, unhealthy or dying. At any other time of the year, I would have acquired a new queen, replaced her and re-start a healthy colony. At this season, you just can't re-start a new hive and, by the time I opened it, its whole population had perished. 
These were my "quiet bees", always in a good mood. I could open their hive without protection; they would come check who I was but never stung me.

I moved to my second hive, "the mean ones" who would always act aggressively when approached too closely. With those, I always had to fully protect myself; they showed no mercy. When I opened their hive this time, they immediately sent an armed patrol my way. The good thing is their population looked good and healthy. I re-filled their feeder and lefty them alone.

For those of you who might express doubt at a hive having a certain "attitude", I'd like to remind that a normal hive has about 30,000 females in there. Don't tell me that 30,000 females can't cop an attitude!

My "hard working ones"

My greatest surprise came when I opened my third hive, the one located in the front yard and nicknamed "the hard workers" because, last Spring, in no time did they produce more honey then the two others. They were amazing. I opened and heard and saw nothing. I lifted the top "super" nice and heavy, full of neatly sealed honey cells but not a single bee to be seen and no dead bodies at the bottom. I inspected every comb for signs of intruders, parasites or diseases. Nothing but a very clean hive with no occupant. I did remember that a few days earlier when the weather reached the mid 70s, their whole population had been very active, too active but, since many of them were still bringing in pollen, I did not panic. Big mistake! What happened during those really warm days is that the queen got confused, figured it was now Spring and chose to take the whole colony to another location (very frequent in Spring and early Summer.) It also means that, at this time of year they all flew to certain death. They had no possible way to start a new colony with the nutrition dearth now available. So there went my "hard workers", my best hive. Had I better understood the situation, I would have placed a queen excluder to bar the front entrance allowing worker bees to go through while the queen and her larger abdomen would have been forced to stay in keeping all workers around her. 

At the next pretty day, I'll remove the super full of honey and add it to my "mean" bees to finish consuming before Spring.

I am now down to one healthy hive out of three. I'll need to buy more bees this Spring and re-start two colonies. I just hope nothing happens to the "meanies". My neighbor David and his peach tree are waiting for their pollination magic in just a few weeks.