Beehives

In the warm weather on Saturday, the beekeeper made the rounds of the hives. Both the upper hives were dead and the boxes removed. The bottom hives looked good.
They reported that they learned from this past year that making splits during a drought does not work very well. Bees make "special" bees in the fall, bees that have a different physiology than do summer bees. Likely, despite our feeding them sugar syrup, they were not able to raise a full quota of fall bees, bees that overwinter well into spring. Hopefully, our remaining hives will make it through the winter.

What looks like show, has really melted and refrozen and it hard and icy.