It seems like only a few weeks ago I was awaiting the outcome of Winter. Would I have bees? Would they be healthy? How many hives would succumb to what many have described as a brutal Winter?  It is Spring and time for new beekeeping worry! The bees for the most part made it. I am still convinced it is because they know what to do not because I know what is best for them.

I have over wintered in 4 medium supers for some years now which most of my peers find a bit excessive. When the weather turned warmer I had the wooden ware I needed in place. One could suggest that my doing this was just laziness and there is a piece of me that would agree. I did my normal super switch which moved the beginning brood down one box. This put an empty medium super over the late March brood. At the next lesson (some call it a visit) from my bees, they taught me that the queen wasted no time moving into the empty space and got busy filling up the empty cells. Last week I added an additional super of empty drawn comb. I don’t want to loose bees to swarms so giving them even more space seemed to be a reasonable thing to do. I also mixed in some foundation and new frames because I did not have enough drawn comb to cover all my hives.  Today I checked and found that several hives were well under way with nectar filling a good number of frames and no evidence of swarm cells. I added a few supers to what I had not covered before and crossed my fingers. Let the flow begin!