In Case You Were Wondering . . .

Sad news in our neck of suburbia:


all our bees died this winter.  It is most disheartening, since I counted on being able to keep my bees for a full year as proof of my awesome novice beekeeping skills.

My mentor tells me not to beat myself up too much: with our 8-degree cold-snap last month, it was a pretty harsh winter for the girls (and useless drones).  So, despite the fact that I:

• spent 6 weeks in the fall treating them for mites by seasoning them with powdered sugar (to make them groom themselves and therefore kick off mites)
• viciously murdered the failing hive's queen and merged the 2 hives
• added 7 pounds of sugar to their hive water every week for over a month
• and positioned their hive for optimal sunlight

their numbers, apparently, just weren't high-enough for them to keep themselves warm last month.

My mentor looked over the hive with me, and didn't see any signs of diseases; he also noticed brood that showed that the queen was laying eggs up until the very end.  If you'll note from the picture above, the bees are all clustered together or poking their bodies into cells: it's like they were just going about their business, then died where they were.

Although I'm sad they died, the good news is that they left several frames of great honey:

looking between two frames

Although I am very (very) tempted to steal all that honey for myself, we're planning on saving it to start a few colonies this year: with any luck, we'll be able to catch a couple of swarms in April-or-so.  All those pre-made frames of cells and honey-stores will give new colonies a jump-start on establishing their hives.

My goal this year (not that I'll have much control over it) is to get 4 supers (the smaller hive boxes devoted solely to honey-storage) filled with honey (last year we got 2 supers).  4 supers would give us approximately 8 gallons of honey.  Which might last our family of honey-bears a year or so.

So please send good thoughts our way for swarm-catching!

**On a sort-of-related note, I am thrilled to announce a new label (those things you don't read at the end of the post that give you an idea of that post's theme): henceforth, any time I write about my adventures in inadvertent homesteading, the post will be labeled "Little House On The Prairie".  Enjoy!**