This summer we were able to pull a bit of honey off of one of the hives. One of the hives had about three honey supers on it this year in total. By the middle of July we were able to pull of just under two of the supers with full frames of honey. It is always amazing to see how much work that they can do over the period of a few months. The bees were able to build all of the comb in all three boxes and had just over half of them filled and capped ready for harvest.

So one of the goals this year was to increase the number of hives that we have. We started with two last year and by the time we were through this winter we were down to one.

This winter was quite mild and our first winter bee keeping. It seemed that we had food on both hives as we went into the winter, but the winter started earlier than we anticipated. Not sure if this lead to the loss of the hive since it appears that they were out of food or didn't move to the right spot for staying feed. Not sure if a harsher winter would have led to less bees eating as much and provided a different outcome. The temperature fluctuations over the winter would seem to make the bees more active then if they were simply to cluster together for weeks at a time.

So we had a day this week that was in the 70s. I made a trip out to the apiary and found that both hives were still alive and did a quick consolidation of the weaker one. My hope is that the less space the easier it will be for them to protect and keep warm.

This winter has been an odd to say the least. By February 7th we had 70 inches of snow, though I don't think that there was any on the ground. Our first snow fall was in early November and it was quite a bit, but by Thanksgiving it was in the mid 50s again, which was the last time I checked on things in the apiary. Every time I saw the swings in the temperature all I could think about was how the bees in the apiary were holding out. So here it is the middle of February and I finally decided to check them again on the 18th of February.

This was our first year of bee keeping and needless to say we have a lot to learn. We started with some second hand equipment that was on the property my brother just purchased. It was a bit of cleaning up of about four or five hives that were set up. I pulled them apart and started to clean frames out. Which in hind sight I probably could have left alone and just reused them with the new colonies that I ended up purchasing, but this is a complete learning experience.