End of Winter?

Looks like another early spring.  The snow has melted and the bulbs and trees are starting to bloom. The bees are finding pollen to bring in even on 40 degree days.

They are going through their honey stores more quickly now and raising brood.  The hive on the scale is losing around a half a pound a day.

You can see the weight drop every day around "lunch time" when the temp warms up.

The hive with the biggest cluster was dropping a lot of weight so I gave them some extra feed with a 10lb bee candy sugar board.

There was a lot of moisture on the inner cover when I checked a couple of weeks ago so this may also serve to absorb some of it. I also added the supers filled with pine shavings.

Look at those stingers! They are not happy about being disturbed. I don't blame them. Can't wait till it's warm and sunny and the nectar flow starts.

Hive Telemetry!

We're going high tech this year!

I got a hive scale for Christmas. We had to wait for a thaw to put it on.

The scale sits underneath the hive and measures weight and temperature every 15 minutes. It has Bluetooth to send the data to my phone. I just push a button on the monitor and it downloads the data onto an app on my phone.

The green is the temp and orange is the weight. I can track how much weight it loses over the next couple of months as they go through the honey stores and raise brood. And then when the honey flow starts, I can watch the weight go up and know when to super (if all goes well!). 

I can't wait to see what the data looks like over the next few weeks.