The Inside Scoop on Bees

Gosh, it's almost the end of March. So much for going out like a lamb. The wind is gusting to over 30 mph. But the sun is shining, temperature topped 60 degrees, and John's out taking down the windbreak around the bees. We need to slid open the tops and look in to see if they made it through the winter. We have three hives and the east one should be okay. We've seen more activity in that hive, like bees going in and out on sunny days which we haven't had much of these last few weeks. Good news: bees are buzzing in all the hives but we can't tell yet much else because John only slid back the tops far enough to feed them a 1:1 sugar to water ratio mixed with their Nosema medication. Even bees get meds. They get real bad bee diarrhea if they don't get their meds, and ours did this winter and did we have some yellow snow! You do want to know about this, don't you? Aside: we have in each hive a bee feeder which is a black trough the length and width and height of a bee frame (of course, you know what a bee frame looks like) into which one pours sugar syrup and when appropriate bed meds so that the bees won't starve in March or April or May as in the case in Harney County before the flower bloom comes on.