Friday 5:32 PM 4/5/2013

Both hives active. Checked about 4PM, temp had got up to about 60 but dropped to 58 by the time I was

ready to go out, and clouds had moved in.

Hive #2 seeemed to be ignoring the sugar, which isn't really surprising since they had so much capped

honey left.

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Hive #1 was curious,...

Sunday, 31 March 2013

Checked the hives today, had ben worried about the #2 hive, thought they might have had Nosema but still not sure of that. They did lose the queen last year but seemed to have successfully bred a new one. Unfortunately, that meant that they lost ground and went into the winter with a low population and had not fully filled out top body with honey, end frames were not drawn, filled and capped.

Both hives were flying, #1 using both top and bottom...

I should get better at posting and keeping records.

Hive #2 apparently successfully re-queened, mated and laying.

Both hives are drawing out comb in the 2nd deeps and filling them with honey.

Rushed to get frames built for the medium supers because I thought they were going faster than they were. Put med supers on yesterday, but they still have empty frames in the deeps. Oh, well, didn't need to rush but it won't hurt to have them...at least, I don't think...

OK, so I checked the bees today, mainly interested in hive #2 but I stopped at #1 first- popped the covers, workers in the new deep. Didn't take it off or remove any frames. Cover back on, watched the entrance for a bit, then looked in (I removed the entrance reducers last check)- bunches of bees mounded at bottoms of lower frames...queen/swarm cells? Hellifiknow, can't tell, don't have time to rip them out and look. It was sunny when I started out into the field but now some nasty looking clouds...

Mother nature didn't do me any favors in the last week or so. The storms we had apparently brought some freak winds to my little valley. The young apple trees that I had left, the ones the deer didn't kill, are twisted and broken. They were the biggest and best. I doubt they can be salvaged, even if I can get some new rootstock and [try to] graft the few bits that seem to be still alive.

That puts me several years behind, I'll have to start over again. The semi-standards take 7-10 years...