Finally got around to cracking open the hives and looking at each frame. One hive wintered in 2 ten frame deeps. It is packed with bees top to bottom, has huge pollen stores and almost no honey stored. Lots of capped brood, no queen cells. Lots and lots of drones running around, and lots of drone brood. So far no drones sighted outside the hive. I also spotted a varroa mite, placed right on the bee's back. I looked for others but didn't spot any, but it's a bad sign when you see them like that.
The second hive, which I thought was fairly strong looking at front entrance activity, actually only has three frames covered in bees. I took it out of it's ten frame deep and put it in a 5 frame nuc, hoping that'll help it control internal temps better. Also lots of pollen and little honey. A few bees had malformed wings.
Third hive wintered in a 5-frame deep nuc, and also has about three frames of bees. Also very active at the entrance. Left it be, no manipulations.
Forth hive, always weak, I noticed about a week ago no longer had any bees flying. Sadly, it died sometime in the last two weeks. Not sure why, as the dead cluster was covering small patches of brood across 3 frames, and it had honey and pollen stored. I wonder if the recent sharp temperature changes didn't whipsaw it. From 60s to 20s overnight, several times recently. It had been weak since last fall, since it was a very late queen and never had time to build up, but I was hopeful and it did survive until April. There was what appeared to be an opened queen cell, so maybe the queen was failing, but there was capped brood present. Way too early for a queen to mate.
The second hive, which I thought was fairly strong looking at front entrance activity, actually only has three frames covered in bees. I took it out of it's ten frame deep and put it in a 5 frame nuc, hoping that'll help it control internal temps better. Also lots of pollen and little honey. A few bees had malformed wings.
Third hive wintered in a 5-frame deep nuc, and also has about three frames of bees. Also very active at the entrance. Left it be, no manipulations.
Forth hive, always weak, I noticed about a week ago no longer had any bees flying. Sadly, it died sometime in the last two weeks. Not sure why, as the dead cluster was covering small patches of brood across 3 frames, and it had honey and pollen stored. I wonder if the recent sharp temperature changes didn't whipsaw it. From 60s to 20s overnight, several times recently. It had been weak since last fall, since it was a very late queen and never had time to build up, but I was hopeful and it did survive until April. There was what appeared to be an opened queen cell, so maybe the queen was failing, but there was capped brood present. Way too early for a queen to mate.