My girls are all doing well, even the swarm caught late season. They didn’t build up much honey, and have gone through more than 1/2 of their sugar block, so I topped them off. The snow and ice had closed the entrances too much, but I found only a few dead bees in all but one hive. That hive was very populated and probably just a lot of Fall bee die-off. Still well-populated.
Clustering
To the left, my thermal camera shows the colonies are clustered and keeping warm. The little box on the left is the new swarm. They are doing great!
Rain & Snow Visors
In order to avoid so much buildup of snow and ice, I slapped together a few snow visors and clamped them on. We’ll see how well they work for keeping manual intervention at a minimum.
Seen on the right, my crude snow visors are set to shield the bottom boards. We shall see. Over the years of beekeeping, I’ve only lost one colony, last year. It got too wet inside, from the hive settling wrong so that it retained the condensation, or the snow and ice built up for a back-dam. I wonder if these snow visors could have saved that lost colony.
