Fun For All Playground

I won't do this often but occasionally something comes up that that is not bee related that I will support through this forum. There is a great accessible playground that will be built in Warrenton, VA. This playground is specially designed for special needs kids with features like:

• Barrier free ramp system which will allow a child in a wheel chair to reach the highest points
• Bright colors to help children with vision impairment
• Different textures to stimulate sensory development
• Swings and spring toys with hand holds and back supports

The goal is $300,000. As of March 20th they have raised $209,000. Please visit the Fun For All Playground web site and if you feel inspired, make a tax-deductible donation. All kids deserve a fun, safe place to play. Let's get it built!

Hive 2 Survived

I was out to the mountain yesterday. It was a beautiful day; 70 degrees, sunny, blue sky. The foragers are out and bring back pollen, mostly a cream colored pollen. I hiked around some and didn't see anything that looked like it was nectar producing yet. But the important thing is they are still alive. Not only alive, but they appear to be thriving now. They sucked down all the sugar syrup I had put in less than two weeks ago.

The bad thing about the bees being so far away is that I don't get to see a lot of what happens in the hive. It is really too bad because I could sit and watch these little creatures for a lot longer than you would think. At this time of year only a few spiders, the bees, and some flies are out so it is nice to go out there in that regard also. This time I got to see something I thought was kind of funny. The flies were trying to get into the hive and the guard bees were trying to keep them out. Watch the 21 second video here.

Hive Postmortem

I started going through the dead hive Saturday. It was a cool, rainy, depressing day so it seemed appropriate. But as I started into it I actually felt better. Maybe it wasn't me. There was quite a bit of honey left in this hive. Now I think what happened is that the cluster got locked in a position that when it turned really cold and we had the big snows for a couple of weeks they wouldn't break the cluster to get over to the honey and basically starved and/or froze in place, still covering the brood. You can see in the picture there is a small but well filled brood space (the picture that shows a spotty pattern was the outside of the outside frame. The others looked better.) that was covered with bees when I pulled the frame out. The other frame I left the bees on for the picture. The queen was still present in the middle of the cluster. You can see the marked dot on her back. Also notice a bunch of bees at the top all the way in the comb trying to get the last bit of honey in them. A couple inches back from the brood the honey begins. It is like this on all 3 of the frames the brood was on with the honey starting in the exact same point like they could eat back that far but not get over to the ends. The brood and cluster are pretty small. Since this is my first year I don't know if this is normal size or not, but this is the time of year the population is at its lowest.

It is impossible to say now but maybe the other colony was better positioned within the hive to be able to get to honey or maybe their genetics are such that they could survive a few degrees cooler. Also, there is a ton of pollen in this hive. Way more than they would use by the time the flowers would have started. If the other hive has a bunch I might think about putting a pollen trap on the hive and capture some of it.

Alive and Kicking

My wife and I went out to feed my one remaining colony again. It was a nice day today; 50+ degrees, beautiful blue sky, and the snow is even melted away in some spots. I was so worried that this colony would be dead when I got to it. But I took seeing a bee fly in front of the truck on the dirt road to our property as a good sign and it was! I could see bees flying around, it was alive! A quick pop of the telescoping cover showed that one of the feed bottles was not quite half empty and the other was maybe a quarter empty. I topped them off and closed it back up. It is supposed to be in the 50s during the day and 30s at night all week although rainy at the end of the week. I sure hope a little warmer temperature will take some pressure off the bees and allow them to cover the brood a little more loosely. Then they can cover a larger brood area with the same number of bees. I'm still worried that the number of bees may be too small to get them through to spring and warmer temps but at least they are still alive now.