Cold Bees

[BlueBee]

How cold did your bees get last night?  It got down to a goose egg here:  0F.  A good test for my foam nucs. 

[windfall]

0F.......those 2" foam nukes should be toasty toasty still!

we hit -14F a few nights ago, then it went up to 38 a day later, then back down to 0. Seems like the temps have been doing a yoyo for us all winter. Every time we get a bit of snow it warms up and rains on it. I like winter but I need some white stuff to play in.

I have been wondering how these rapid large temp swings (this time of year) effect a colony (if at all).  If it is problematic, another potentially advantage of the insulated hives would be attenuating those rapid changes.

[BlueBee]

I wonder how Killington is doing with the rain + snow + rain cycle! 

So Windfall are your insulated bees still kicking?

[GLOCK]

Crazy year for temps. for sure . I only have 3 hives and all have a nice hmmmm when i checked on them yesterday.
It was in the 50s a few days ago and singel digits the next . Right now 8f .
My bees still have honey and some dry sugar just in case. Hoping for a fun spring.

[windfall]

It has been awhile since we got warm enough for real activity, but they were still alive back in early December. How strong...I really don't know.

One of them pushed a  bunch of DWV bees out the front (and dead mites) in early November. I figured they were goners, but no more big die offs since then (I think)

All that insulation makes it impossible to hear them like I can in the wooden hives. But usually if the weather warms to high 30's and sun I can see a few walking about inside the entrance, and doing a bit of "house cleaning", not so with the other hives so the insulation seems to be doing something. Whether it is helping remains to be seen.

I keep hoping for a nice "warm" day that I will feel brave enough to open them up and see what they look like...but really I know my curiosity is more likely to harm them then answer any real questions besides are they alive and how big is the cluster. I guess at some point I need to re asses their stores, but that seems hard to do without pulling frames....really wish I had weighed them in fall. What a nice non-invasive way to monitor...live and learn.

I just hope one makes it so I can stock them into the observation hive I just built! I think I will wait on buying the pricey laminated glass until spring!

[Vance G]

It is clear up to -3 today.  It bottomed out at -18 and has been mostly within ten degrees of that.  Thankfully no huge killer wind  It is supposed to get to forties next week and the nasty wind will bring that in.  But on the bright side, it is too late for it to be a long cold winter already!

[Rich V]

-2 last night, snowing,and windy right now, expecting 6 to 10

[sterling]

It is clear up to -3 today.  It bottomed out at -18 and has been mostly within ten degrees of that.  Thankfully no huge killer wind  It is supposed to get to forties next week and the nasty wind will bring that in.  But on the bright side, it is too late for it to be a long cold winter already!

Three days of those temps would be a long cold winter for me.

[Vance G]

But that cold raises cain with the chiggers and we only have to weed gardens 3 1/2 months out of the year!