Had 16 below zero this am, 14 below right now. But its the wind that's a killer, literally, and its blowing/gusting like mad, making the possibility of doing anything outside a chore. Our current wind chills are 30-40 below.
Not sure what it means because I've never seen it before, but yesterday around noon, it was zero degrees w/ bright sunshine so I walked down to my beeyard for a look/see and at the entrance of one of the NUCs I purchased from "beeNuts" (he used to post here) had bees milling about at the entrance and one even flew off. I doubt she made it very far.
I had just checked and added more dry sugar, mixed up w/ some of BlueBees "honeyballs, in all 8 colonies when we had temps in the upper 30's a week ago, so the strange behavior exhibited during such extreme temps is disconcerting to say the least. I fear they may have consumed their stored honey with the very warm 'beginning' of winter and are rejecting the sugar and thus will likely starve. C'mon Spring!
I'm kind of at a loss for any other explanation.