Sunday May 10, 2015 Day 29 of new hives

It was glorious out yesterday when we returned from our trip to the Czech Republic - side note: we went with 6 of our family members, which included my parents: my dad ended the campaign in WWII under Patton's 3rd Army in Pilsen, Czechoslovakia and there are AMAZING celebrations of their liberators/our veterans annually but particularly on the "five" anniversaries. Of course, these veterans were all over 90, one will turn 100 in one month, so the chance of them returning across the ocean in 5 years, seems difficult to imagine.

We celebrated VE Day and the Liberation Festival in Pilsen from 1-6 May then we were in Prague for the last two days, including 8 May (official VE Day).

Anyway, there was too much laundry, mail, jet lag to check my hives other than I filled one of my syrup jars.

Today, it is cool, windy but I needed to check the pollen patties and replenish the remaining 3 (quart) jars of 1:1 sugar syrup. Of course, my iPhone battery died after my first video and photo, so that will be all you see today! Then it started to rain when I opened the second hive.

So the first hive, both pollen patties were mere remnants, so put more on the bars of the second box (not top box because it pulls the cloth too much and then they will get into my feeder box). The second hive, there was still almost a whole pollen patty left, but I replenished with two more anyway - it's supposed to be cool and rainy the next few days. Jim Kloek (Stillwater, MN) keeps pollen patties on until the first week of June. Marla Spivak's notes (from the U of MN beekeeping course) just show pollen patties for two weeks when one first hives the packages. Well, hopefully, it can't hurt. Too late anyway, they're on.

I was considering looking at a comb but due to the weather, decided against it - I gently pulled back an edge of the top box's cloth and it's so intriguing to feel the heat emanate out of the hive. Thus I sealed it up quickly and let them be.

This is the "first" hive with the two new patties on (see the old ones?):

We hired someone to do a "prescribed burn" of our land ~12 acres before we left for the Czech, so this photo was 10 days ago:

This is the brief video as I opened hive one