How is everyone doing coming thru winter.

Robbin

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I've only lost a very weak nuc, but a commercial buddy has lost 30. We're very close to spring here in Florida, highs in the upper 60s and low 70 are in the forecast for next week. So we're almost out of the woods. After my buddies loses, I've decided to start feeding next week when it warms up. I don't want any to starve this close to making it.
 

Happy Chooks

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Both of my hives came through fine, thankfully. I wasn't too sure my weak hive would make it. It was from a split and got a queen really late.

I've added feed to both of my hives. They have had pollen patties as insurance all winter. Then last week, when the temperatures warmed up above 70 degrees, I added sugar water.

Both hives are bringing in a bunch of pollen. We have several plants in bloom right now: Manzanita, 1 of my pluot trees, my apricot tree, wild plum and quince. We are supposed to get a rain storm tomorrow and Thursday.
 

Latestarter

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Hey Robbin, sadly I lost my one remaining hive sometime I believe in January. So I don't have any bees to worry about at the present time. Good to see you back posting. How you feeling/doing?
 

soarwitheagles

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Hi everyone!

My friend and master beek lost over 50% of his hives this winter...he had over 70 hives, so that equals a loss of 35+ hives....

My one and only hive started growing like gangbusters last fall, so we split it. The new split has had no stopping sense...the queen laid eggs all winter long and we had to continually put on more and more supers.

The mother hive on the other hand became weaker and weaker. Finally, most experienced beeks on a top bee forum pronounced the death sentence when I posted the pics of only 2-3 frames of bees in Nov-Dec.

Fast forward 4-5 months, the strong hive was able to be split 5 ways, so we went from one thriving hive and one sickly hive to 7 hives, one being given to our beek friend. The weak hive bounced back and we saw the hive go from 2-3 frames up to 7-8 frames.

Then, captured a nice swarm a few days ago. So now we are up to 6 hives on site.

We hope to do more 4 and 5 way splits later this year and also capture lots more swarms. So I suppose it is safe to say we are looking at 20-30 hives before the end of summer.

So to answer your question: how are we doing coming through the winter? I would say, "Beeeeeautiful!"

I went from nearly giving up and selling everything to seeing these hives thrive...

Man, what an adventure! And to be 100% honest with you, it was one heck of a roller coaster ride! Many, many ups and downs...
 

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