Today the sun came out and the wind was quite calm so Barb suggested we take a peak inside and really check out their food stores.
I had only glanced at one frame in a couple hives and didn't see much honey so last week I had put in feeders of syrup in all the hives.
So we started with the big bad hive (hive 1) It was tough removing the frames...they were glued down well. But we did manage to get several out and we found honey, so was very happy. I did put in a full frame of honey I had saved from last fall to give them a little more since its the biggest colony.
We saw lots of bees and lots of pollen being stored. They had emptied the syrup bottle and we noticed "nectar" in some cells. What the heck, then decided they were probably storing the syrup. So we closed that up and preceeded to hive 2. Everything looked good in there, lots of honey. When we removed some of the frames from hive 3, we found a really big area of capped pollen and some uncapped brood. Wow brood in the second box. The queen must of gone on a walk about. Hive 4 was all good in there too.
So we were happy that they all have enough honey left until the flowers start blooming. I was happy that we know that the queen is laying in hive 3 and can only assume that all the queens are laying now.
Anyways, all going well, the warmer weather will keep up and spring has arrived. In a week or two we should be able to remove the winter wraps. Then we will have to get ready for swarm season by having a box ready incase.
But for now....we wait.+
