I checked today and my two strong colonies are alive, and well. I saw capped brood and larvae. In one hive I saw the queen. The winter stores looked pretty good, in so much that there was still a lot of capped honey. There was still over a foot of snow that I had to tramp through to get to my hives.
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I am adding to my apiary with adtional packages in 3 weeks. My mentor told me that if my existing colonies are strong and they have multiple frames of capped brood, I can take a frame or two from the over-wintered colonies - move them to the new hives and dump the packages on top of them. Sounds reasonable to me and helps with the typical die-off that accompanies a package for 3 weeks after installation. Anyone else got experience or better ideas?
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