Bee Yard Visit on February 25, 2017

A perfect day for a bee yard visit!  The Texas wildflowers are starting to pop up - Spring is here!  (Click on photos to enlarge).


Dewberry flowers are one of the first flowers to show up in our area.

Mark and I had a great day inspecting our hives.  Our big chore this visit was to remove the Apivar strips from each of the deep hive boxes.  The strips had been in the hives since... and were a big help in treating for varroa mites in order to keep our bees healthy.  Currently, three of our colonies have one deep hive box and the other two colonies have two deep hive boxes.  

The trees are sprouting leaves and the grass is turning green!

We started our inspection with the easy ones; hives 03, 06 and 08 (the colonies with one deep hive box each).

In hive 03, we saw our queen and about two frames full of bees.  This isn't many, but it is good that they made it through the winter. 

Hive 03 bees have only one deep hive box.

Hive 03 bees have good brood (the brown fuzzy spot will soon hatch new bees).
The lower "smiley face" is pollen to be used as food for the baby bees.

Hive 03 queen in the middle has a long apricot-colored abdomen.

We also saw our queen in hive 06.  She was so large!  There were about three frames of bees in this hive, but no honey was left for the bees to feed themselves.  We took a frame full of honey from hive 08 and placed it into hive 06 to feed the bees. 

Hive 06 bees have only one deep hive box.

Hive 06 with some brood and pollen.

Our large hive 06 queen positioned just below her capped brood.

Hive 08 had plenty of honey and a lot of brood and eggs.  Although we did not see our queen, were did see tiny eggs and felt comforted that she is busy at work.  There were about two frames of bees in this colony.

Hive 08 bees have only one deep hive box.

Hive 08 bees with tiny eggs, larvae and brood.

Mark and I then moved on to the last two hives; hive 05 and hive 04.  In hive 05, we removed the top hive box to inspect the bottom one.  We saw our queen and she had tons of brood.  There were about eight frames of bees and they had a good amount of honey and pollen.  This colony is a candidate for splitting within the next two months, to give us an additional colony of bees. 

Hive 05 has plenty of bees to start their spring foraging.

Hive 05 queen near the middle (do you see her?) and bees with capped brood. 
White spots are uncapped brood being fed until they are capped at which point they will change into pupae.

Hive 04 got the gold star this visit.  It is also a candidate for splitting.  There were about six frames of bees in both the top and the bottom deep hive boxes.  We saw our queen in this hive as well.

Hive 04 bees building new comb on the wax foundation of this frame.

Hive 04 bees with lots of brood.

Hive 04 queen with her bees.

Look at all of these hive 04 bees!  And many more will be hatching very soon.

We were very pleased that all of our colonies made it through the winter.  They will be very busy in the upcoming weeks and we will pay special attention to them to keep them from becoming overpopulated and swarming.