2017 A year of highs and lows and smokey days

March 24
It was a cold winter that seemed to go on and on. But by March 27 we knew all 4 hives had survived it. It had warmed up by the 24th enough to slip pollen patties in each hive and to see that the big hive had completely eaten their candy board. (all 5lbs of sugar)

April 8
Wow the bees are pulling in pollen, spring is finally coming. Some was yellow some orange.
April 21
Bees seem to be doing good. They all have honey leftover from the winter. Found new brood in hive 3.
May 2
Finally removed the winter wraps.
May 19
Need to check out the hive with my Russian queen. They don't seem to be very robust. Will tear hive apart tomorrow and check
May 20
Opened up the Russian queen hive and found lots of  pollen and nectar but no brood.  Queen Anna must of died, I couldn't find her. So I Robbed a frame of uncapped and capped brood from one of the other hives. Hopefully they will build a new queen.
June 1
Did a hive inspection to see if there was any queen cells in the russian hive. All the brood i put in there had hatched, so lots of bees, but still no queen. I will try one more time giving them uncapped brood from another hive. Checked all the other hives and everyone else looks good except for the "nuc" hive, it had way too many drones, and drone cells. We will replace the queen in that hive.
June 5
No sign of queen cells in the Russian hive, so out of desperation, we combined that hive with the "swarm hive".
Checked the nuc hive again, it had produced too many drone cells last time so wanted to check them again. Lots of new worker cells, everything looked good inside it.
June14
All hives out working. The combo hive is doing good, the paper has been chewed thru, so they are combined now.
July 31

Smokey days in McBride

Smokey days

Too busy at the motel to do any inspections inside hives. Bees appear to be doing good. During the weeks of the forest fire smoke they are very slow. Not sure how much honey we will get with all the smoke in the valley. It has also been a very hot dry summer.
Aug 1
Pulled 9 frames of honey. Looks like we will get more honey than i had thought.

Aug 15
I had ordered a bucket with gate valve and 3 filters so when it arrived we extracted the 9 frames of honey. To our surprise we got 3/4 of a 5 gallon bucket full!

Aug 26
Pulled 6 more frames of honey, but will extract them later.
Sept 10
Finally got around to testing for mites. I had big plans to do a sugar roll to test for them but jeepers we were still so busy at the motel. So i made sticky boards. I also made up some syrup and will put
it in the hives tomorrow. I used 2 cups of sugar to 1 cup of water for this time of year.
Sept 12
Decided I needed to treat the mites. I was surprised to see how many mites were in one of the hives, not a ton but enough to treat.

Sept 14
Compressed all the hives down to 1 brood box and 1 honey super (plus the attic box with syrup feeders in it) added pollen patties in each hive also.
Sept 28
The weather has been incredibly warm and the bees are still bringing in  yellow and greyish pollen. I am still feeding syrup. (probably til early 0ct)
Oct 5. Bad day. Lost most of one hive, not exactly sure what went on. Some robbing going on, cant find a queen and not many bees left. The remaining bees were busy working still in the upper honey super. No time to waste, winter is almost here, i can't lose anymore of the bees so combined them into the next hive, so they have a chance to survive..
Oct 7
Made 2 candy boards yesterday and put them in the 2 hives today. (8lbs of sugar this time) Got the attic box all ready. Will insulate soon.
Oct 10
Put tarps up on fence to block the wind. Snowed hard, very damp out.
Oct 12
Insulated the attic boxes
Oct 14
Cold and windy. Panic set in that winter has arrived. Insulated the hives and got them all wrapped and ready for winter.

To be continued............