The girls were out in force today

[rober]

it was clear & 60 here today. i noticed a lot of bees near the house so i put them to work. i did not clean the last 2 5 gallon honey buckets I'd drained. i saved the leftovers for the girls. i also collect buckets from local bakeries & had a few of those with frosting & jelly filling leftovers. i set those buckets out on their sides & it was amazing to watch the bees clean them out. there were several hundred bees gleaning every last drop. i also walked down to the hives & found them on my watering pans by the hundreds. stood nearby & watched & there was a lot of housekeeping going on as well. i was surprised to see their how interested they were in the water this time of year.

[AllenF]

Gotta love the warm days in the winter.

[rober]

i just watched the weather & it got up to 66 today. i'll take all of this weather that wants to drop by. still have february to go tho.
took the new pup to the local park today & discovered they have a dog park. he got quite the work-out today. took him on his normal walk after & he turned around 1/2 way & wanted to go home. that's a first.
  i was happy tp see strong activity at all 5 hives. looks like they might just make it.

[Intheswamp]

All of this warm weather is bothering me...  I was talking with a friend of mine that has had a feed-n-seed store down along the Florida line for years.  I mentioned something about the coming summer and she said that there are several folks in her circle of communication that are predicting a situation in this area than will be worse than what was in Texas last summer.  Hope they're all wrong...

The bees were out today in town, too.  I fed a few of them on top of the garbage can lid.  Temps got into the mid to upper 60's...moving into several days in the low 70's then this time next week back down into the upper 50's for highs.  Tonight the low is ~36 with the next weeks lows being in the low to high 50's.  A good bit of rain predicted.

Ed

[BlueBee]

Rober, sounds like your bees might be raising brood!  They drink lots of water when brooding.

Swamp, do you have your bees home now?  I thought they were wintering at your local beeks place?

Got up to about 40F here today, little to no sun; all in all a great winter day for Michigan.  Found another dead drone in front of one of my hives!  So far I’ve seen drones every month of the year.  Kind of crazy.  All my bees are still alive in their experimental super insulated foam hives and nucs.  The foam hives with the top entrances are by far the most active, there were a few bees flying at 40F today.

[luvin honey]

What the heck, BB? A drone? I thought I saw an awfully large bee being carried out of the hive today, and now I'm wondering.

This is only my 3rd year beekeeping, but I still thought it was unusual to be almost stung in a Wisconsin January :) I was peeking at their housekeeping when one angry girl came shooting out of the hive.

Through my observation windows, the colonies look as big as they did going into fall, all spread out in our very warm (40s) and sunny day. Lots of hive cleaning and hopefully cleansing flights.

[Intheswamp]

Swamp, do you have your bees home now?  I thought they were wintering at your local beeks place?

Yes and no. ;)

My two full colonies are at my mentor's house.  A friend of my mentor (I'm beginning to wonder if he's my mentor's mentor) had a small 8-frame nuc of probably two full frames of bees, some stores, a little brood, and a nice leather brown queen.  He said he didn't want to feed them through the winter so he sold them to me for a buck a frame. :)  But to be honest, I think he just really wanted me to have bees at my house to "get my hands into".  Both of their views of the nuc is that even if it doesn't survive then I still get some good hands on experience through this (mostly warm) winter.  I've already done three full inspections by myself...barehanded and stung only once! ;)   I've put the sugar syrup to them and they've been bringing in pollen from the camellias and ???.  They've got plenty of stores of sugar syrup and pollen and there's a nice patch of capped brood.  I've seen a couple of beetles and they all failed the pressure test.  Unless something drastic happens, I think I'll be hoping to hit the ground with three colonies to start with rather than two. :)  

The bees I referred to in my post above are feeding in the middle of our two traffic-light town...about seven miles from my house.  I have a small business in the middle of town and I'm fortunate to have a nice southern exposure that is shielded from the north (we had watermelons growing along the sidewalk one year at Christmas!<grin>).  It would be fun to beeline them and see where they're going, but free time is in short supply right now...they leave the top of the garbage can (a little Sprite drink or maybe a drop or two of my mentor's honey dropped on top...from healthy bees) fly straight up the wall (18-20 feet up) go over the edge of the roof and head north.  I need to be sure and not feed them, though, on the days they pick the garbage up.  :-D

Here's a small thread with a couple of pics of my downtown bee visitors:
http://forum.beemaster.com/index.php/topic,35675.new.html#new

Ed

[Vance G]

My bees (carnies) are maintaining a few drones this winter.  Not a lot, just an occaisional one.  But they may every year and I would never see it because it is rare to have this much flying weather this time of year here in the cold country.   a breeder who posts here says the trait is bred into some of his stock. 

[texjim]

loaded up the kid and drove over to my mentors house today and checked on the bee's.. they were working pretty good.

[backyard warrior]

texjim those bees were probably cleaning out the dead and also they are possibly taking cleansing flights to releave themselves.  As far as anything else there isnt anything availabe till spring.   Chris