After 3 weeks of freezing and subfreezing weather, it hit 50 today. I decided to take to opportunity to remove the top box off one of my hives that was only partly filled. It had two full frames of honey, One frame about half full and the rest were frames of drawn empty comb or partial drawn empty comb.
Both hives are not one deep and one medium with honey. When I pulled the top box I noticed the bees were clustered in the next box down. Unless it's a huge cluster that reaches into the deep, I'm assuming that they didn't pull honey down into the brood box. If that's the case, it looks like they'll go through their honey by the end of the month and I'll be out there feeding them for the rest of the winter.
I'm also thinking that if there are no bees or honey in the deep, I could pull it and let the bees winter over in a single medium, since I want to get rid of the deep anyways in spring.
I decided to put the frames of honey into the second hive, which was already just a deep and a medium. I pulled the cover and there was just a few bees hanging around. I took out two empty frames and saw a handful of dead bees in the corner on top of the deep frames. When I pulled the next two frames, I found the cluster in the deep, which is what I was expecting to see in the first hive.
I put the three frames of honey in and closed them up and am now pondering on what to do. Tomorrow will be slightly colder and then it's downhill from there as far as the weather is concerned.
Topic: One weak hive, One not as weak (Read 1711 times)