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I've been keeping this blog for all of my beekeeping years and I am beginning my 19th year of beekeeping in April 2024. Now there are more than 1300 posts on this blog. Please use the search bar below to search the blog for other posts on a subject in which you are interested. You can also click on the "label" at the end of a post and all posts with that label will show up. At the very bottom of this page is a list of all the labels I've used.

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I began this blog to chronicle my beekeeping experiences. I have read lots of beekeeping books, but nothing takes the place of either hands-on experience with an experienced beekeeper or good pictures of the process. I want people to have a clearer picture of what to expect in their beekeeping so I post pictures and write about my beekeeping saga here.Master Beekeeper Enjoy with me as I learn and grow as a beekeeper.

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Sunday, January 12, 2014

Sunny, Warm, Bees Flying and Hauling out the Dead

Today the bees are bringing in large loads of pollen.

















This is a good sign.  When the winter solstice arrives on December 21st and the days change and start becoming longer rather than shorter, the queen senses this deep in the hive.  She begins gradually to lay brood in preparation for spring.  Usually she just lays a little at first and the build up is slow but sure.  The pollen lets us know that there is brood in the hive that needs feeding.

At the same time a lot of bees have died in our recent cold and the bees spent yesterday and today hauling out the dead.  Yesterday the side of this hive looked like this:


This afternoon here's what it looks like in the same location:


These are bees who have died over the recent weeks when it was too cold for the bees to carry out the dead bodies.

Tomorrow we are back to wet and coldish weather so they will be confined again.  Tom reports that the bees at his house are flying (the two Bill Owens' cut out hives); the Stonehurst innkeeper reports that bees are flying from both of their hives; I haven't heard from Sebastian.

3 comments:

  1. Although it's up to 51* here, it's been raining so the bees are still holed up.

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  2. Good to hear your bees are hanging in there Linda! We are getting flight weather on Tuesday; I will visit all my bees to see if everyone is still alive, and put sugar bricks on all the colonies.

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  3. After 3 years of reading about keeping bees I finally found some live people to talk to in town. I'm so excited to learn more and hope to be starting my own hive next year. Thank you for this blog. I'm living vicariously right now!

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