the latest cold snaps ruined my queen nursery last week. today i was checking one of my hives and thanks to the rain/cold snap they were full of bees and brood but all the nectar they had a week ago was gone. went ahead and went through my other hives and found another one in the same condition and one that will be there in a couple of days if they don't start bringing a good bit of nectar in tomorrow. i fed the two and will check the third saturday. 2 weeks ago every hive was storing nectar and there was even a little newly capped honey. hopefully this round was the last one. rain is still moving though every few days but that's probably actually a good thing.
I learned a valuable lesson today I was going to put this in another post but I feel that it is proper to drop this information here. We all are at the mercy of mother nature and mother nature is a hard teacher. I looked in on my splits, three are dead, starved, robbed it doesn't matter why. I wish that I had had forsight but that isn't the way we are made. We work for a living some of us work rotating shifts that are 12hrs long and have a two hour daily commute. Whatever the reasons all kinds of excuses, cold weather, inexperienced beekeeper, working for a living, first time splitting, being in a rush, the list could go on. Can you guys tell that I'm really PO'd? I don't do failure real well. I'm a pretty driven guy. You know the type "If your gonna be a bear be a Grizzly". Anyway, I didn't put this here to take away from 10framers post when I'm off GY's I'll post about the valuable lessions I've learned and we can talk about it then.
What I really wanted to say is: 10framer, I'm sorry to hear about the queens but I'm glad you caught your bigger problem in time. Good eye, keep us informed about what's going on. The more information we share the better equipped we are to improve. Staying ahead of circumstances is pretty tough. Like this weather, who knows what's coming next. One more shift then I'm off for three days. I get to play catch up.