Starting up the blog again after a hiatus.
To summarize: we had a good harvest from our one good hive last fall. The other hive never accepted a queen for any length of time.
A few weeks ago, when there was an exceptionally warm winter day, I checked on the bees; the one hive, North, was active. The other was dead, as I had expected.
Today, another really warm day, I cleaned out and closed up the South hive, and did a quick check on North. South was chock-full of dead drones, a sure sign that either the last queen they had never mated well, or they had developed a laying worker. North had a lot of dead bees, more than I would have liked, but a lot of honey stores left, and a decent cluster of bees. So I’m hoping they will survive through the rest of the winter, and we won’t have to start anew entirely.
More soon.
–Slim
Chicago Bee Blog 