December 30, 2011 and bees are flying

[Jacobs]

It's 61°F,sunny, breezy, and the bees are flying and bringing in pollen (sawdust?, something?). My nuc has 4 mediums on it and felt light. I went into the top super with plans to put on a couple of frames of sugar water honey from the freezer. The frames in the top were fairly heavy with sugar water (approximately a 2:1 mix) I have kept in quart jar feeders at the back of my yard. I closed the nuc back up and put the frames back in the freezer. I'll keep an eye on it, but the cluster was not in the top box and they were adding stores up there, so my hope is that they have more stores further down and closer to the cluster. Time will tell.

[ski]

I also noticed the bees flying today, snapped a picture of a few bees in the chicken feed. There was a bucket of pollen sub about 50 feet away with a few hundred bees, I guess the bees in the chicken feed didn't get the memo.

[Jacobs]

I'll keep the sugar water going when weather permits bees flying, but I am going to probably hold off on pollen substitute until the middle of January. Wait a minute, that's not too far off. I'll have to schedule a trip to Wally's for some more spent brewers yeast.

[Zulu]

Plenty new bees flying today from two hives, at first I was worried about robbing but, on closer eval, it was new bees climbing up, and jumping off for a quick local flight.

By midday all 4 hives were working the open feeder in the yard, also plenty bees on the water tray, which surprised me.

[sprayburn]

I checked my hives earlier in the week to see how they were using pollen patties and to check on honey stores.
They we not only flying but when I checked the super on top where I gave them honey back in November, they have started filling the empty cells with nectar. Locally we have cherry trees and maples blooming. This weather has me confused, but the bees are just taking advantage of what they can.