I don't have to tell any of you...
This was the HARDEST winter ever...
of my life...
ever!
Now, we've had winters with more snow.
We've had winters just as cold.
But we have never had a winter with this much snow and ice and this much cold,
that just didn't relent for this many months.
I have felt it.
You have felt it.
The animals have felt it.
Sadly, I have just come to find out...
the bees felt it too...
that is, until they no longer felt it at all.
It is so disappointing and disheartening to see that our one last hive...
(the one that gifted us with so much honey last year)
perished during the frigid winter weather.
Cody, our beekeeper since Hubbs had an anaphylactic reaction to a bee sting,
checked our hive on a warm afternoon this week.
Opening the hive, he found sufficient honey stores,
but no living bees.
There were lots of bees there....but they were all dead.
Such is the tenuous life of beekeeping.
We did all that we could to keep our bees going through the winter...
insulating hives with burlap and tar paper...
and leaving adequate honey stores for their consumption...
but to no avail.
The cold winds were too great a stress on the little ladies.
I have ordered several packages of bees with queens that we will install in our hives
in the beginning of May.
The leftover honey stores
(many pounds of honey were still left behind in this hive)
will be used to feed the new bees.
I refuse to give up.
I refuse to let Old Man Winter triumph over us.
We will keep trying...
and trying...
and trying.
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