Imbolc Woodpecker Moon
To appreciate the irony here we have to go back to last year. I decided to change bee management practice. One colony would be held to over winter, not expecting much because of illness related losses the last two winters. The other two colonies would die out and I would get two new packages of bees in April.
If the parent colony survived, I would divide it per the U’s method and let the parent colony make honey this year and die out with the two new packages.
When I went out today, just a casual check since this is too early for the bees (I thought), I was surprised to see bees flying in and out with vigor from two colonies, the parent and one I’d left to die. There were also bees flying into the third colony. Now, I haven’t opened the colonies up so I don’t know what kind of recovery we’re looking at here, but I could have five colonies where I expected two.
Crazy weather.
