Winterish

We've had a fairly cold week, and a few inches of snow.  It's actually our first week with a hard freeze.  I've been a bit concerned with the bees, and I haven't had a chance to do an inspection because it's been either too cold or very overcast.

Today I jumped at the chance to do an inspection when I heard it was in the 60's.  Sure enough when I got out to the hive, the poor girls were crowded around the small opening of the entrance reducer.  They're still working hard and coming back with loads of pollen.  I pried out the entrance reducer before I got the smoker going just to give them a chance to unload.

The two top supers showed significant improvement.  It's been at least two weeks since I moved the empties out and took off the third one.  There's a lot of newly capped honey.  It even looked like they were laying down more comb.  And there's still a lot of uncapped nectar, which I don't want to take out of the hive, since I can't harvest it.

I wore a white suit today for the first time today. They seemed to be a lot more relaxed.  I smoked them pretty good, but the white suit seemed to really help.  I don't know if it's sting proof, but i suppose I'll find out sooner or later.

I wasn't able to get the frames out of the hive bodies.  they are so caked with propolis, when i tried to pry them loose, it was actually the hive frame that cracked first.  They seem really healthy.  I looked down into the top hive body and it looked completely full of honey.  I looked under the bottom hive body too, and it looked really clean too.  I didn't separate them since I had no idea where the queen might be.

I'll have to do some more research, but I think they are looking good heading into winter.  I'm planning to wrap the hive with some kind of insulation, perhaps styrofoam, to help them keep warm.  I'm really pleased to see how well they are doing and so proud of their hard work.  It's been a fantastic year to start beekeeping in the Rockies!