Unfortunately, all three of our hives failed to make it through the winter. I pulled all three apart last weekend to look for clues and to prepare for new bees. Each seemed to have plenty of honey. Starving is a common occurrence with bees; they make it through February, but run out of food before the dandelions bloom. For the Langstroth hive, my guess is that it was a week colony with low numbers. They seemed to make it into December, as I heard them in the hive, but we had one cold snap in January, and they may not have had enough bees to keep warm. The Layens hives are more puzzling as both seemed strong going into winter. I do have a theory, about another common malady of bees in winter. These haves are well-insulated, so I am wondering if moisture made have affected these hives. So this season, we are bee-buying rather than beekeeping.
We purchased three 3-pound packages of bees through the local bee club. They arrived on Thursday; Maggie picked them up and I took off from work to help get them installed. I had the hives opened and frames pulled out by the time she came back with a trunk of bees. Having gone through this last year, we were better prepared and the process went smoother. The only debate was whether the queen box should go into the hive with the exit hole up or down. Following old directions I placed the exit up, but Maggie was right in saying it should have been down. We shook the bees into their hives, replaced the frames, and closed up the lids. We left the packages near each hive to let the stragglers find their way in.
Friday was a dreary day, but I was able to gather up the three empty packages. Last year we over-sprayed the bees with sugar water and lost a lot of bees. This year, there were just a few dead bees in each package, so the transfer went much better. Saturday, we donned our bee suits and opened each hive to check if the queen had been released. Fortunately, the workers had released each queen. The hives seemed fairly settled, with bees coming and going to look for flowers.
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