It was a rough winter on many fronts. There were nights of below-zero temperatures and the two bee hives struggled to stay alive. Although one hive eventually lost the good fight, the second hive came through with a renewed energy as temperatures began to rise.
As you can see from the above picture, the scene was shockingly gruesome upon first look – all hive boxes were full of dead bees. It was unpleasant to sweep them out to start over.
Thankfully the second hive got strong quickly enough in late winter, with early pollen collection and brood development, that the hive was viable for splitting. In fact, it was probably just a week or two away from swarming. My mentor, John, came over just in time to help me perform my first hive split.
At the end of the split, there are two hives again! The queen was successfully placed in the new hive with sugar syrup to help the new colony grow. The old hive had already begun to develop a new queen, which hopefully put it further along in the process to re-queen the hive. On the hive that was split, a medium super was placed on top for honey collection and I suspect it will be a short time before it’s time to add another. I’m going to have my first honey harvest this summer!
