What the heck should I be doing now?
A timely article about Beekeeping in the Pacific Northwest - Kathleen Clerc

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First of all, if you are one of the lucky keepers that have made it this far with hives that survived - Congratulations! What a feat! March is the last month where hives really "make it or break it". You can think you made it through but any experienced PNW keeper will tell you "Wait until March is over".

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If you did not make it to March - I want you to know... we have all been there. Please don't give up! Beekeeping is challenging and take practice. What is important is to find out WHY you didn't make it and plan a stronger approach for this upcoming season.

With that, all of us have a hive or two, or more that did not make it to March. What's really important to do is spend the time to analyze the frames, observe the signs and try to come to a conclusion of what happened in the hive that caused to to not make it so that you can come up with a plan for next year to "do better" or take comfort in knowing it wasn't you. In my personal Apiary, I have 7 out of 9 hives surviving. The 2 that did not - had their reasons. One of them was able to get into their quilt box and for whatever reason a vast majority of them decided to do so. Therefore not enough bees were left to keep the hive warm. It was a sad loss, and I would honestly call that beekeeper error. They should have never of been able to get into the top box. The second hive that passed away was one of my best queens, a survivor... until she wasn't. I believe that hive passed because the entrance wasn't cleared and they got locked in :( that is also beekeeper error.

In the Club Apiary, I was actually really shocked to have 3 hives that had queen failure. I could tell that this was the reason because there were very little bees in the hives, no signs of starvation (no bees died deep in their cells with their butts sticking out) there was no sign of brood. It was like opening an empty hive with a tiny little clump huddled together in a corner. This means to me that there were not enough bees being laid, either the queen didn't mate enough to lay enough winter bees or enough to start again and build her brood for Spring. Maybe she was squished, or passed away at some point in another manner. So the bees just kind of... fizzled out. The biggest way to tell however - was the presence of capped as well as gnawed open queen cells. The bees tried to replace the queens, and some didn't hatch. Others did hatch but no virgin queen is doing a mating flight in winter, or if she tried, she didn't make it home.  

Did your hive die of mites? This more often looks like "starvation" where many bees have their little butts pointing out of the cells and they don't have many bees in the hive because most had perished of the diseases the mites gave them. They weren't able to stay warm and feed, and chilled to death in their cells. 98% of the time, when people say their hives died of starvation with food still on the hives - that's mites, not truly starvation. Treatments need to be taken seriously in my opinion.

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With a few 68 degree days I know I wasn't the only one to open the hives and see which of them really made it through winter! My biggest focus was getting the bees more DRY food to make it through the next few cold weeks! Some of them really needed it! As we are going into another string of 50 degree days, I didn't feel it necessary or advantageous to do a full deep dive into each of my hives, I trust that they know what they are doing. Less focusing on looking at each frame, unless seeing activity that made me feel otherwise. I chose to let them do their own thing (for the most part). I did however open my most active hives to run quick inspections as even though its early, some queens are laying with a passion. I had to add a box in the club apiary to one hive whose entire bottom box was full of robbed honey and collected pollen and the top box was packed full of brood. Adding a box will hopefully prevent the hive from an early swarm. It is still a bit too cold to add a box in my opinion, but I decided to take the risk because of the size of the colony. I felt that they were strong enough to stay warm despite adding a box. Something else that I did was add a big long slice of banana (with the rind) to all of the hives on Saturday, when I glanced today (Monday) every single hive had eaten that banana down to the rind! More on the banana topic below.

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For those that are getting ready to invite bees into their Apiaries for the first time or are replacing their dead outs with new nucs and packages - Or those that are just opening their hives and prepping for Spring - it's already time to start thinking about your treatments. First of all, make sure you have your bees ordered already (if applicable)! I would check on the date that you "should be" receiving your bees, and start immediately planning right now on how you are going to treat them for varroa mite upon installation. I applied an OA dribble to my hives and to the club's hives upon installation in 2023 and thought that it worked well. You will probably hear from the sellers that the bees come pre-treated, but honestly I'd still treat them again, just to be sure... That's just me though! I'm just like that. 2023 bees came up from California very heavily infested with varroa, it was a hard start for the bees.

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So what in the heck am I talking about, bananas? Am I bananas?.... Well yes, but there is still a point to what I am telling you! This is my first year using bananas and I really feel that it made a large impact to my bees health. 
PODCAST HERE - Start at about 18 minutes

Katharina Davitt did a Thesis Paper on finding cheap alternative ways to supplement and feed bees, regardless of country or budget. She found that people in Africa feed their bees bananas with some seriously surprising benefits! The nutritional benefits of the bananas stimulate the queens to start laying. The bees the queen lays benefit from more minerals and micronutrients, essentially she's laying healthier bees. Katharina ran many studies and also has cited studies held all around the world in many different countries, all come back with the same conclusion. "[Adding bananas to the hive] increases brood by 10-20%". This also means that there are only a few select times that you should be applying banana, at the end of fall when the queen is laying her winter bees, and at the beginning of spring, to help with spring buildup. We have keepers in our club that gave bananas to their weakest hive in the yard, and that hive was the strongest coming out of winter! I encourage you to listen to the podcast. And no! You aren't going to get attacked by bees for having bananas in your bee yard! My bees love the bananas!

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So in short my lovely friends - Assess, Clean Dead  outs, Feed and make a plan to Treat - That's where we are at!

Dry food for now, it's not quite time for liquid feed, that will come in April.