April 2019 - Ready for another year

April 15th and I'm ready for bees.  I am just getting a package this year...at least that's all I've ordered.  I may relent and get either another package or upgrade to a Nuc. I'm tired of not keeping the bees alive over the winter which is why I ordered less.  Frustration at work.  In fact, last year, with the drones taking over my hive, the bees didn't make it to Thanksgiving.  I was pretty disgusted by then so I did nothing further with them and decided to just deal with cleanup in the spring.

So about a month ago, I started looking at my equipment, most of which is down cellar.  I had moth larvae all over, but saw no moths, thankfully.  My comb was basically gone.  At that time, I cleaned off all the comb and threw it out.   My bees this year will have to work harder making new comb. 

I also decided to not store hives down in the basement anymore.  So I moved all deeps and supers to the fenced bee yard where they are sitting pretty, empty right now but clean and ready for use. I do have several frames of honey in one hive so those will need to be brought in and extracted before the new bees arrive.

Yesterday, I planted some early crops...arugula, mesclun, spinach, swiss chard and peas. I have a row tent to protect seeds from critters (at least from above).  Last year, moles seemed to find food from below. The row cover did help a lot last year and I used the white sheer cloth over the other seeds too.

Happy spring! And let the dandelions bloom!