This is the winter location for the bees. We didn't think they would make it at ~8000 feet all winter, so we moved them to this location north of Longmont at about 5000 feet. The hives are sitting in a location that has a windblock from the back (augmented with styrofoam sheets behind them) and each hive is wrapped with black paper. We put the solid bottom board under them (removing the screened bottom board) and wrapped them tightly last Fall. There are styromfoam sheets protecting them from the "windy" side, too. They get a full day's sun and have water right beside the hives. Our hope is that this helped them survive the winter. I'm checking on the bees today because it is warm and they are out-and-about.
We strapped them down to a pallet so the winter winds (or a creature) would not have a chance to turn the hives over. I wanted to check inside and see how things are going, so I pulled the top box on the stronger hive. It weighed somewhere between 40 and 50 pounds. Tim had explained to me that bees go UP, not DOWN. So it may be that all the bees are "upstairs" and I need to swap the top and bottom super. He instructed me to look at both supers, determine the location of the bees and the brood. If the food is gone from the upper super (having eaten the pollen and honey during the winter) then the Queen will have moved upstairs and will be laying brood in the top box. If all the brood is there, then just swap the top and bottom. If there are frames of brood in both top and bottom, I would need to "mix and match" to get the brood in the bottom super. Thankfully, it appeared that most everything was up top and we just swaped boxes. We also pulled much of the tar paper off the sides. It is warming up!!!!
Looking through the pallet slats, I noticed a number of dead bees lying down below. I don't know if these are bees that died from cold/lack of food, or bees that were forced out of the hive---or some other explanation! Below you can see a close-up of the dead bees.
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