Blog PostWinter Colony Death

This first entry will be short, due to its nature. Inspecting my 2 hives in late January, although we didn't open them up and go through them, hives seemed healthy. Didn't want to disturb them, had plenty of traffic in and out of the hive. Left them alone until the beginning of March, and decided to go into the hives to determine health during the first week of March. What we found was very disappointing, both colonies had perished. We assume this was due to the extreme cold week we had during February, where the temperatures dropped into the teens, and there was a rather small grouping of bees in each hive. The warm winter possibly caused too many of the over-winter bees to die off from trying to forage during the winter months. That's only a guess from a newbie beekeeper.

So we start over!