Today, Sam S. was helping with some clean up around the apiary and a quick hive inspection of the bees. We installed some rustic edging around the garden, did some weeding, and put down about 1/2 yard of leaf mold mulch to help hold down the weeds. We saw crocus, lemon drop primrose, and the blue bells starting to come up. The maple trees on the Church Property are also budding. With the warm weather coming this week, we expect that we will start to see the locust and black cherry trees start to bud up as well.
Temperatures were in the low 50s so we chose to inspect only two of the five hives. During the inspection, we saw new brood with a good amount of drone brood. This is a good sign that our queens are laying and that they are reacting to the longer days and slowly warming weather. If the warm weather persists, we will try to inspect all the hives and do a Varroa count and see if we need to treat them. The hope is that our oxalic acid treatments in December and January have been effective and that there are very few mites.
