January Thaw

Record temperatures this morning, in the low fifties.  After a rare thunderstorm passed through, I went out to do a quick check on the bees in our remaining hive.  There were bees flying, which is a good sign.  I did use smoke, since the other day when I did a quick peek, just lifting the lid, one little bee quickly sacrificed herself on my glove, so I thought I'd better be more cautious.

Opening the lid, I saw the patty I had on top of the inner cover wasn't really touched yet.  Lifting one side of the hive, it felt pretty heavy, much heavier than the other hive when I discovered it was dead.  I removed the inner cover, which was covered with bees, and placed two patties directly on top of the frames.  Since I dumped some bees down in front of the hive off that cover, I set a frame with some honey on it for them to climb back up to the hive, hopefully getting a little treat on the way. 

 The bees looked good, and there were large numbers of them, which is promising.  

Unfortunately, the warmth this morning is the best we're going to do today and the thermometer will plummet to the teens tonight, with 2-4 inches of snow predicted and sub-zero temps tomorrow night.  Such is Iowa.  I'll need to go out later today to recover the frame.