Spring Inspection at Bees a Charm

Reader Contribution by Tia Douglass
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It’s already been a very busy bee season this year.  Was very pleased to find—after this unusually cold winter—that my girls were doing fine and ready to start the spring hub bub!  Back in April, my friend Michael and I grabbed one of those few-and-far between warm days to do a quick inspection.  I had combined a couple of my hives last fall to make them stronger, taking the advice from our NC State Bee Inspector, Adolphus Leonard, “Take your losses in the fall.”  Well, it paid off this past winter because upon inspection we found that the combined hives were very strong and could easily be split, giving me back my five hives!

Last Saturday, one of my hives swarmed!  And after-swarmed twice more!  Although they were 30 feet up in a tree, once again thanks to Michael (he’s a tree-climbing fool!) we were able to recapture and hive two of the three swarms. . .the third and smallest escaped our grasp despite 3 attempts to hive them.  They headed to the woods; hope they’ve found a nice home.  As a thank you, I gave the first swarm to Michael for all his hard work.

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