Our colony of bees is still alive in spite of my newbie errors. This week I took out the large feeder and replaced it with two smaller feeders. Now the temperatures are back down low, and so I have to wait until the next warm day to repeat the process.

On the first warm day the bees cleaned out the dead bees, those bees who didn’t survive the several days of freezing weather:

Lots of bees die during cold snaps, but here is a terrible picture of the very busy colony:

I wish I could have gotten a sharper picture, but I have problems taking pictures when wearing gloves. The up side is there are many bees and they even have begun to build a cell for growing a future queen…. I think it is new because I don’t recall seeing it before.

So we have had a good solid several day freeze which will help with the annoying insects next summer and it may help with the wildflowers that seem to need some harsh weather before they spring to life in the early months of the year.

I need to hurry and build my second hive so I can make a split when the bees start making new queens!

I love how cold this winter has been, and am also eager to leap into spring. I marvel at their resiliency. This is a strong colony and I hope strongly that I can do better by them in the next year.

Dear Lord, Thank You for bees and the privilege of tending this colony. Please bless them and help me be on top of things this spring and make the right decisions. +Amen.