Luckily, the rain stopped in time for us not to need the umbrella Continue reading →

Clermont’s bees continue to store honey and produce brood. Continue reading →

The weather for today’s Clermont visit was a little humid and got a bit warm. We decided Continue reading →

Today’s Clermont visit provided encouraging queen status data and reassuring mite infestation level information.

We inspected the colonies looking for brood in all three stages (eggs, larva, and capped) Continue reading →

Today’s temperature made it into the high 40s which was warm compared to the past three weeks. Continue reading →

I visited Clermont on several warn days over the last few weeks and added fondant to the colonies. I was encouraged to find bees in all colonies although several had lower quantities. I just looked at the top bars under the inner cover. There is little doubt that some colonies may not make it to spring. I have also been keeping protein in the external feeder, the bees have been using a good amount.

Updating the Brood Minder site to keep the data current has also been part of the routine. On December 16 the data showed internal temperatures of 72⁰ in the colony center and 60⁰ at the top. Kind of low I’m thinking but standard rational is that there is no brood at this time of year, so temperature is not going to be 95⁰. I searched Brood Minder back for two years data and found that the colony has data that matched what I am seeing, low temperature in December through February. I thought this might be of interest to some of you and have attached a screen shot with two years of temperature records. Browse to  https://map.beecounted.org/hive/summary/nKhR if you would like to review this data in more detail. There is 5 years of data from the same hive.