Aristaeus2 - A Good Beginning for Spring Bees

This hive started from a swarm I collected several years ago. It has always been a strong hive and has a fierce independence about it. I wasn't sure how well they were doing when I opened the hive today for the first time and saw all these dead SHBs on the tops of the bars. We have had a cold, cold end of February and I imagine they couldn't live through the weather.

This is the first year of my five beekeeping years that I am still seeing live SHBs in the hives. Usually they all die off during the winter and then reappear at the end of June. But they are alive in both of my hives - not a lot - the bees are managing them - but they are there.



When I lifted the top box off of the stack, I found opened brood in burr comb between the boxes. I don't get why they did this. I felt bad killing all the pupae.



The brood pattern which was on about five frames looked about like the photo below. I could worry about the empty cells but I believe the queen started laying and was fooled by the weather. We generally are full into the warmth of spring by now and we had below freezing temperatures and snow just last Tuesday. So I think the brood didn't make it in the cold and was cleaned out by the workers.

Generally the hive seemed about three weeks behind this time last year (as did Mellona) and the brood area was just getting started.



Then in the second box (there was nothing in the bottom box) I found Her Majesty! I've circled her in yellow below. I know the picture isn't well focused but I thought you'd like to see her. Next time I'll keep the camera on a tripod and maybe the focus will improve.

Most of the bees looked healthy, but the bee in the lower left is definitely a victim of Deformed Wing Virus. I've circled her as well so that you can see the wings (even out of focus, the evidence is obvious).

Hive Inspection - First Real One of the Year

I did my first real hive inspection of 2008 on Sunday afternoon. Both hives looked healthy and had lots of bees. The bees in Mellona in the first picture were all through two boxes. The brood was all in the bottom box and had not moved up, to my surprise. The second box was still heavy with honey.
Last year at this inspection, Bermuda was a small handful of bees, with Varroa everywhere. But the queen was alive and with many powdered sugar shakes, the hive rebuilt itself. This is the hive where the original queen was cast out on January 6 this year. They obviously have a queen and are really building up. I scraped off the burr comb that you can see on top of a couple of frames.
I did a powdered sugar shake on both hives today and with the DWV (Deformed Wing Virus) that I saw earlier in the month on the dead bees on the deck, I will be shaking sugar every inspection this spring. Look out, Costco, here I come!
The sad news was that I had left a Ziploc bag feeder inside the Bermuda hive. There were so many bees in that hive a few weeks ago that I was afraid they would go through their stores. I knew when I put it in the hive that it had sort of folded over on itself, but I didn't do anything about it. The many dead bees I found inside it today let me (and preventively all of you) know that a ziploc feeder must be sitting flat on the frames in order to keep bees from drowning as they get the sugar syrup.

Bringing In the Pollen and Bringing out the Dead

It's warm and the bees are flying from both hives. They are both bringing in bright yellow pollen (see first picture) and bringing out the dead.
In looking at the dead in both the second and third picture, it's clear from the deformed wings that I have a Varroa problem. I don't how early I can begin powdered sugar shakes. I'll post on the bee forum pages and let you know what they say.
I also wondered about the white dots in front of both hives. I assume it's bird feces from a bird eating the hundreds of dead bee bodies, but I don't know if I should worry about something else instead.