No surprises for me yet. Lost a few smaller nucs that never seemed to do much, a few large hives I waited too long to treat for mites and they crashed. But do you know what happens when you have a lot of hives? You almost
like a few losses so you can take all those drawn and filled frames and distribute them to the other robust hives, or have a reserve for springtime feeding,growth, checkerboarding, etc.
Over all, all the other hives look great.
Seems I can't video and talk at the same time-sorry
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-KOFdzQM1k&feature=youtu.be
Here is a triple divided deep hive with two Northern locally mated Glenn daughters.
Although this hive was fed some syrup this fall and was very heavy in weight, I put sugar bricks on all my hives ..some just for insurance. Many hives have had a large population of bees for a long time. They Still looks great. I gave all my hives a single Hop Guard mite treatment in late Sept/early October. Some probably could have used another treatment due to continued broodnest activities, but I lost my chance when the weather got cold.
Heres an average triple nuc:
Photos are taken at 42 degrees. None of the hives are light, in fact many will have to be adjusted this spring to aviod the queen being honeybound. That's a lot of bees on the top though.
Here's how I winterized them:
Only wraped on three sides. The front is facing south and uninsulated for solar gain.
Here is what I call my Franken hive.(When I assembled it it was a monster) Only the Two bottom deeps are made out of 1 1/2" car decking. Interesting, out of about 75 standard hives, this is the only one with bee activity at the top and bottom entrances @ 42 degrees.
I had bees in this all summer, and surprisingly, it wasn't hard to manage. It's the filled frames that makes it heavy, not the additional wood. Look closley, the honey supers are standard 3/4" thick pine. Just firred out with a 1x2 to fit the larger exterior size of the bottom deeps.
Don't you wish your bees were in this thick hive right about now?
Heres how it's made. The top and bottom entrances are reduced for winter. Screened bottom has slide in and top screened inner cover has 2" foam insulation
Heres where I keep the bees. Our 80 yard archery range. Hives and targets all along the edge.