I hope everyone's bees have come through the winter cold snaps so far and are doing well.  Earlier this month during some brief warm periods, we managed to get into all of our hives and check to make sure that all was in order.  With 11 hives, it is interesting to see how much variation there is in terms of food stores and queen activity.  Fortunately, everyone was queenright.  Some of our queens are quite prolific and some seem to be pacing themselves, by comparison.  While everybody had food stores (and we are feeding, currently), the amount of stores varied considerably, but the one pattern that I am seeing this year is that smaller hives definitely had a lot more empty comb than much larger hives.  The bees really seem to be stocking up on pollen right now.

On our property (7 acres in Argyle), we are not seeing a lot of wildflowers blooming yet, very few in fact.  The bees, however, are managing to find plenty of pollen and I was able to observe the pollen jocks at each hive, arriving at the end of the day in large numbers, laden with pollen.

When we did our inspections, it was just far enough to make sure that the hives were all free of any remaining Apivar strips, to verify that we were queenright with multiple sides of brood, evaluate food storage, remove whatever superfluous burr comb and propolis we encountered from the frames checked, look for signs of other insect activity, and verify the condition of woodenware.  Looks like I will be spending some quality time with a screw gun on a few of the boxes.

At this point, we are waiting on the start of the nectar flow and replace medium frames (partially) loaded with simple syrup for frames of empty comb for honey storage.