The Start of Spring Was...

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A few days ago, I saw a post from the Minnesota DNR that explained how April in Minnesota was the gloomiest on record in the last 60 years (in regards to solar radiation). Having had snow on our Bee Day, followed by freezing temps for days on end, more snow, and rain, it made a difficult start to the beekeeping season. There was little chance to inspect, but we were able to see that the queens in each of our hives were laying eggs and the workers were starting to store up pollen on the days that were warm enough to fly.

We had a good chat one evening about how to manage mite treatment. This would likely be the most challenging aspect of our season, so it felt good to have a tentative plan and have it off of our to-do list before the evening was over. 

Then, we woke up to the sound of a piece of wood dropping on our back patio at 3 am.

The sound had been a hive lid. Imagine our surprise when our patio light revealed a medium-sized black bear was making a major feast of our bees and comb.  In moments, the bear had tipped both lids off, along with the large rocks and log pieces holding them down, and had also knocked over and spread one of the hives out on the ground. We safely scared the bear away and I stood watch while my husband put the hive back together as quickly as he could. The moment was intense to say the least. Dealing with a black bear is difficult enough - now we also had two instinctively very angry bee colonies to cope with.

While I was on flashlight and pepper spray duty, my husband closed up both hives completely and we brought the bees inside our house for the remainder of the early hours. He brought both hives out to the farm first thing in the morning. They would have been moving out there in a few weeks anyway, so our timeline was moved forward several weeks. 

We let the bees have some time to recover and acclimate, and today we did a thorough inspection to see how each colony was doing. The first hive had been the one tipped over and spread apart by the bear. We were really happy to find, today, that the queen remains in the hive and she is laying eggs. Although their numbers are way down, they will have many new bees hatching, starting in just a couple of weeks.

The other was hive was pretty full from the start of the year and had been mostly left alone by the bear. We checked that one and were happy to see it in a good state. My husband had saved two supers full of honey from last year. Since nectar is more readily available for the bees now in the outdoors, we removed the feeder boxes and added that comb he saved for the bees to eat from and work with. 

There were eggs, larvae, pollen and nectar in both hives. Not many inspections make beekeeping decisions simple, but today's did. 

Warmer weather has finally arrived, and amidst the busyness of the first "normal" May in a few years, we seem to have made it through a spring start that has been...kind of a bear.

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