Sad bee news…

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.