29 January 2:30 pm - 2011

It was 67º at the Bee Yard. Clear skies and no wind.

Swarm Hive - Opened it up and found an empty hive. It was pretty clean considering it was a dead hive. The robber bees did a good job of cleaning out most of the honey and food stores. Took the hive apart stored for later use!

Alpha Hive - The bees have not consumed very much of the feed. Went ahead and removed the top cover and the honey super. The honey super had small amounts of capped honey scattered throughout eight frames. But there were not many bees in the super. Removed the honey super until springtime. The frames with honey will be fed to one of the other hives. Looked through the top hive body and found that 7 of the frames have capped honey and uncapped honey. I didn't go through the frames of the bottom hive body. I noticed as soon as I removed the top hive body that the cluster was about the size of 4-5 frames in the bottom hive body. I put the hive body back in place and left the hive with just the two hive bodies and the inner cover and telescoping outer cover. I will not be feeding this hive sugar water since it looks like they have so much food stored in the top hive body.

Beta Hive - The bees consumed all of the feed! And they were pouring out of the feeder hole. This hive still has a honey super on it and the bees may have consumed the stores, I don't know yet. I also did not inspect this hive at all due to the number of bees and their agitation with me.

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Back Yard Bees

The honey super that I removed from the Alpha hive is sitting on a table near the hive so they can use it.

28 January, 12 pm - 2011

It was 55º at the Back Yard Hive. Clear skies and no wind.

The feeder jar was empty, replaced with a full one of 1:1 sugar/water. Bees were a bit agitated during the change out. Hopefully thats due to being cooped up the last few days.

23 January, 1:30 pm - 2011

It was 53º, clear skies and no wind.

Backyard Bees
The feeder jar was empty so I replaced it with a full jar.

At the Bee Yard...

Alpha, Beta & Swarm Hives
Replaced feeder jars. Swarm hive jar was empty, Alpha hive jar was 3/4 full, Beta hive 1/8 left.

16 January, 1:00 pm - 2011

It was 59º at the Bee Yard, clear skies and no wind.

Replaced the feeder jars of all hives today.

Alpha Hive & Beta Hive
A lot of entrance activity and bees flying all around the hive, could have been cleansing/orientation flights.

Swarm Hive
Noticed that there are no longer any of the light colored carnolians! All of the bees look like the Italians from the Alpha & Beta Hives. Its looking like the swarm hive perished and the other bees are robbing the hive. Although I didn't see any debris and such when bees rob a hive.

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At the back yard hive... on 15 January 2011 I replaced the feeder jar. There was a lot of entrance activity and many bees flying all around the hive yesterday and today.

I need to continue studying how to do hive splits!!!