Pictures of our winter killed hive

Queen cell from different angles. This hive swarmed last summer before we bought it from a neighbor.

There were several frames of beautiful capped honey in this hive. They starve to death while attempting to chew through the caps.

Bee butts. This is a pretty good indication that they starved.

I am pretty sure this was caused by an infestation of varroa mites that we din't catch until it was too late in the year to do anything about it. I lost two hives to varroa this year and have one more struggling. They were eating a few days ago when I checked on them, but they don't seem to have the numbers that the Utah hive does. I hope it makes it.

Hubby has been busy

We are expanding the apiary! Going for an even 10 hives this year. The nuc is over wintering well and the hives that were struggling in the fall are still alive so I am optimistic. We also got snow this year so hopefully this means we will actually have plants that bloom for them. Last year was so dry and hot that we had NO honey stores and have been feeding the bees all winter. We are also trying out some new equipment this year so I will let everyone know how that works out for us. We are also switching up the breed of bees we are raising. Until July of last year we only had Italian bees. They had some issues with the climate. They also got very tempermental. Then we ordered our Carniolan/Caucasian queen and put her into a nuc with some nurse bees and brood we took from our strongest hive. Those bees can be worked without gloves and they have not stung any of us. They are thriving this winter even though they were robbed late in the fall and went into winter with low numbers and hardly any honey stores. I am really liking these bees. They are almost solid black so it's easy to spot them in the yard. Lots of changes to come, hopefully one of them will actually involve a honey harvest this fall!