The bees are doing well. Actually, the colonies at my homestead are exploding with bees – great sign. I did lose the small NUC at McCook Lake IWL but the full colony is still alive!! That means I am currently at 75% survivor rate. I will take it. It sounds like the commercial beekeepers are seeing 70-80 % loss this winter. It is reminiscent of the CCD losses seen in 2006 – 2008. Very scary.
As promised, I wanted to add an update of checking my colonies in the winter with the new thermal camera.
Jan 28 Hive CHive C
Here is a thermal photo from Jan 28, 2025. It was a warm morning and you can really see the heat (yellow) radiating from the colony. I take these first thing in the morning before the sun can warm the outside causing a false reading.
Feb 17 Hive CHive C
It was definitely a colder morning on Feb 17, 2025. At first, I thought maybe the colony was shrinking as winter bees will diminish. After looking (quickly) into both of my colonies last week, that is not the case. This colony has 10 frames of bees all the way into the bottom box.
We are starting to look into spring fairs and markets. Stay tuned to our Facebook page for updates on upcoming events. Some of our raw honey sizes are limited but our hot/creamed are available.
It is going to be a busy year as I intend to do some grafting and expanding the apiaries. It has been too long since taking the grafting class at the U of MN. It is time to just jump right into it.
Two new products we are considering this year are: comb honey and soap made with tallow. I am going to replace a couple ingredients in my regular soap recipe with tallow. It does not change our bar characteristic by much at all. I love my current soap formula/recipe. We are going to try a 4 ingredient soap bar with all tallow except for a little bit of my beeswax – fingers crossed. This is a larger post but I skipped last month, so take care and bee kind.