First Feeding of the Year

Today's temperatures got into the mid 60's so I took advantage of the mild weather and went out to the hives. Although it was extremely windy with strong gusts, I decided to feed the bees an extra supplement of syrup to keep them from starving. We've had a pretty good winter here, as predicted in my previous post about the Woolly Worms.

The winter recipe for syrup that I used is 2 1/2 quarts of water and 10 lbs of sugar. I used a total of 30 lbs of sugar. Each hive feeder was filled to the brim. Hopefully, this will be enough to carry the bees until the first bloom, which, according to my chart, should be the maple trees.

Both hives had plenty of activity with bees coming and going. The bees on top of the frames were a little lethargic, but that's to be expected.

One very interesting observation I made was the amount of dead bees outside of both hives. The 'undertaker bees', the ones responsible for carrying out the dead inside the hive, were very busy.

Below are two pictures, although not as clear as I like (I've made it a point to take better pictures this year)

Here is Genesis: Lot's of activity.

The work of the 'undertakers'.