Winter Inspections
January 25, 2019

Paramount Nursery

It’s been about two weeks since we fed the bees with 2 to 1 sugar water. Since it is 73 degrees today, we decided to go to do full inspections to see what is going on in our hives.  At the Paramount nursery we are so happy that the Cecilio hive and Jeff’s hive have made it through winter so far!

Both hives had a lot of foraging activity… bees coming and going! When we opened the Cecilio hive, Jeff said “great”! Bees were all around the inner cover vent hole! We could tell there were a lot of bees! You can see a top down view in the first photo!

I did a full inspection and was so happy to see that this Queen is busy! Great patterns of capped brood and a lot of uncapped larva!  I found only two empty frames on one end near the feeder and one on the other side. The feeder was empty so they were nourished by the 2:1 sugar water during that cold spell.We did a varroa check and it was neglible: 1! Awesome news!  I added a pollen patty and a second box! Yay! Feeling good!

We then went up and inspected Jeff’s hive which was a two deep, 10 frame hive. Jeff had three frames of sparse brood and two frames of honey in the top box and not much action in the bottom box. He switched the position of the boxes so that the queen is now in the bottom. His mite count was high so he treated with a Formic pro strip. 

Altadena Update

This hive has a lot of activity but when we opened it up, we noticed that there’s mold on the inner cover. A couple of the frames on the end we’re also empty and one had some mold. This hive is in the shade most of the day in the winter but it’s protected in the hot, hot summer. I used my hive tool to clean up the mold as best I could.

It appears that the sugar feeder may have been too far away from the brood cluster where the bees are huddled together to keep the hive warm. Hardly any sugar syrup was taken and many bees where dead in the syrup. My first inclination was to take it out which we did and then as I was adding empty frames to take its place, I realize that there was hardly any honey in this hive. They will starve without enough food in honey stored.

After talking it over with Jeff, I decided to put the feeder adjacent to the 3 to 4 frames of bees with brood. Although I did not see the queen, it’s clear she is laying and I saw larva as well as capped brood. There did not seem to be enough bees for a varroa sampling… So we decided to dust the tops of all the frames quite heavily with powdered sugar. Hopefully the bees will groom each other and knock any mites off.