Beekeeping
As you can probably guess from the title of this blog, our bees have died. I know they were alive in December because we saw some dead ones outside the entrance of the hive. This may sound contradictory but seeing dead bees is actually a good sign because it means that the bees are keeping the hive clean (and throwing out the dead bees).
Last Saturday, Joshua’s 4-H beekeeping group had their first meeting. Our leader, Alison, said she had 12 hives going into winter and that 4 were still alive. Another family had 4 hives and 1 made it through the winter. So, it seems that about 25% of hives were successful in our little group.
The silver lining is that the bees did not get around to eating a lot of the honey so I think we can go in and harvest some out. It looks like we will be starting over and I have already placed an order for new bees that should come in April.
We are not sure why the bees did not make it. I don’t think we did anything wrong. It is just how it goes with honeybees. It has been one of the coldest and snowiest winters. That may have had some effect. I just love this picture that Henry took of the beehive with all the snow.
