[redfan]

I started off this year with 2 seemingly healthy hives that had been started as package hives the previous April and overwintered once. Nifty.

Then we had what I like to call "this ****ed up Spring". Winter lingers, flower blooms are shy. Then it warmed up, a lot. Bees came out of cluster, but they had eaten all of their winter stores and there wasn't enough blooming for them yet. I didn't notice quick enough, and one hive died. Bummer, dude.

But I still have the one hive, even if it's sketchy to make it. So I feed, feed, feed and the hive comes back from the brink.

I also went ahead and got 2 more package hives for this season. I had queen issues with one hive, and the other was doing fine. I re-queened the bad hive and figured all is well. It wasn't. That hive didn't do shit this season! I mean they built out zero comb! I had given them a deep box that already had 8 frames totally drawn out. The bees said "Thanks mister, that'll do!", and proceeded to do no more comb building. I've never seen that before., not one more frame had been drawn! I just checked them on Monday, and they're still content with what I had originally given to them. I'm not very confident this hive is gonna make it through winter.

My other package hive did well. I got 1.5 gallons of honey from it, a fully drawn deep, a fully drawn medium super, and they are about halfway drawn on another medium super. This hive is still sucking down the 2:1 about a gallon and a half per day!

The near death overwintered hive was my star this year. I got 6.5 gallons from that hive and I haven't killed it yet!
I just finished treating all 3 hives with oxalic acid, so hopefully that will increase my survival pct. going into next year.