Mid-April, I opened up Meg and Jo to make sure the bees were near capped honey so they weren't in danger of starving. Even if there's honey in the hive, if it gets too cold, and they bees are forced into a small ball to keep warm, they may starve with honey just a few inches away as they stay put to try to keep their brood warm!
Both hives were clustered in a great spot near plenty of honey, so I just took off the winter cover and swept out a couple of inches of dead bees that had collected over the winter. Last weekend, my dad was kind enough to reverse the hives -- swapping the top and bottom of the three medium boxes to push the queen's brood rearing back down to the bottom. This helps organize the remaining space for the year's honey collection and harvest.
On April 23, my dad and I traveled out to our new location in Afton where Jen and Lucia have kindly allowed me to put up three hives on their property! We built a simple fence to keep their dogs from getting too close and installed three 3lb packages of bees with MN Hygenic queens. All three hives have one box of drawn comb from last year, a second box of foundation (undrawn honeycomb) and two boxes on top holding a small feeder jar.
Today, I went out to make sure the queens were laying, and I found all three hives had eggs, and at least one of them had capped brood in it! I'll have to make a regular pilgrimage to the apiary as it was really nice to take a long lunch break (the apiary is MUCH closer to work than home). I removed the feeders and found that each hive was well established in the bottom box and none of them had started drawing out comb in the second box.
Here's a couple more pictures. First, the collection of bees on top of the first box of one hive, and
second, some eggs and larvae on a frame after I blew on them a little to get the girls to move out of the way.
