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Winter Pics

7K views 19 replies 6 participants last post by  Durandal 
#1 ·
Some Mountaincamp method...sucking up moisture and when its too cold to go out but warm enough to move around inside they are hitting the stuff quite nicely.

Nine days apart between the first three images. Sorry they are not at exactly the same angle to show better comparisons.







Close up from last week of current consumption.

 
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#7 ·
Fantastic Pics!!
Wish we could get some snow. Haven't seen any since March 93 when we got two feet. If it keeps getting warmer we won't have any winter at all. My propane tank read 21% in September and 19% today. Haven't bought any in three years now. Used to use 100 gals a year! (And no I haven't moved.):lookout:
 
#10 ·
Checking activity without opening up. This is from this afternoon. I scraped the sheets last Thursday. This is the amount of debris fall for three days in zero and sub-zero temps. So I know these are active. One has nothing which makes me think its done. The rest look good too, but the photos came out poorly.





 
#12 ·
They did well. I'd buy from him again, but I have not heard back from him.

I accidentally killed one of the queens in transit when I picked up 4 nucs from him and he replaced her.

Of my six three are his. The fourth was my fault. Missed the queen, thought they were queenless, did a combine and wow.

All in all I was very happy with his bees and very unhappy with my actions. :D

I pulled about 109# of honey off three of them. Which is not bad considering I was comb building and we had a drought from July on.

In Addition: The three colonies remaining colonies seem to be overwintering quite well....so far.
 
#14 ·
More winter pics...today we got hammered (relatively speaking) with lots of snow (which does not bother me) and ice (which, when it snaps trees and power lines does)...its still dropping ice as I type this.

No snow pics, I'll have those tomorrow. Been wanting to get some good ones for holiday cards next Christmas. Spent most the day making covers for nucs.

Last Friday it was up in the high 40s low 50s so I took a peak to see how they were doing. Lots of activity up front on all hives. All the colonies appear to be healthy, I think. I thought I had lost one only find out it was simply waiting to explode during some warm temps.

Anyways...some pics before I hit the hay.







 
#19 · (Edited)
I am not really worried about the mites.

All I did this last year was powder sugar treatments (three times). I timed this right at the end of October as the brood space shrank quickly. Those four mites were 4 of 5 but I could not get the fifth in the frame. That's five mites dropping, with heavy activity (the first 14 hours) followed by reclustering, which depending on the colony can alter the debris drop a bit.

So far a 0.71 mite per day count does not have me worried. I can see the bees and they appear to be clustering, breaking cluster, and reclustering well, not a whole lot of dysentery, nice numbers, and we are about two weeks from the first early budding of Silver Maples and on the back side of the cold weather.

And I have more pics from today...bees and snow when its in the 40s is a great opportunity for some good shots.

A video... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BckEqtJcL0

My favorite of the batch...






 
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