Happy New Year Beekeepers!
I hope that everyone had a fantastic Christmas and a happy new year. My wife and I had a great holiday and with the cold weather breaking for a brief period I headed out to see how my bees have been coping with the bitter cold -25 days we've been having lately.
The drive out to the acreage wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it might be. I assume this is because they roads we travelled on are all technically within city limits and are therefore plowed eventually despite being low volume. Another possibility is that because of all the housing construction out there the large vehicles have made short work of the snow.
We arrived to find Mario in his tractor plowing his driveway, one of the disadvantages of having an acreage is the long driveway you have to shovel in winter. As always we had a brief chat with Mario about how things have been. Fortunately for us Mario had attempted to plow a path out to the hives, but after almost getting stuck gave up the venture. Even though it wasn't complete it saved us from having to trek through some ugly drifts.
We arrived to a very quite and solemn looking hive. Mario had kindly placed a snow fence in the treeline behind the hive so the snow drifts weren't that bad near the hive. He had also placed a burlap skirt around the bottom of the hive to keep snow from getting under the hive. He was worried about the airspace below my hive because of the cinder blocks I am using as a hive stand. I indulged Mario as I have never really worried about it because everything I've read says it's not the cold temperature that will kill your bees but moisture, hunger, or disease. If anything the snow below the hive would act as an insulation anyways.
It took some effort to get closer to the hive as the snow was knee deep. As I neared the hive I noticed that the specks in the snow at the front of the hive weren't the tree debris I had initially thought them to be, they were dead bees.
Yesterday we had some really warm weather so my first assessment would be that the hive was active and doing some house cleaning, getting rid of the bees that have given their life in service to the hive. Another possibility would be that something or someone had come by and given the hive a good enough knock to send out a defensive force, but seeing as there weren't any type of visible tracks near the hive I ruled this out. I am taking these dead bees as a sign that the hive is in exceptional health as they are still performing hive duties when the weather permits. Another positive sign is that the plastic covering the top entrance had some condensation on it meaning that there is still warm moist air coming out.
I briefly cleaned the lower entrance as some ice and snow had built up blocking any sort of ventilation. I have read that you can increase ventilation by using a grill type entrance device instead of a solid piece of wood. As I'm not sure if this is just for warmer climates I'll do more research on the subject and let you know what I find.
Until my next post, stay warm and stick to those resolutions!
