Everything I’ve learned about beekeeping tells me that I should’ve manually fed my bees over Winter to improve their chances of survival. Truthfully, I considered it going into this Winter because I was worried about the pre-existing condition of my colonies. However, I’m so glad I stuck to my biodynamic beekeeping practices and trusted in the resilience of nature. My colonies are coming out of Winter looking very strong and ready for the new year!

Me and my girls took full advantage of the weirdly warm Winter days of February to prepare for the upcoming season🐝. They’ve been busy harvesting water and pollen to satisfy colony needs while I worked to expand the hives for their early season build up.

I added one empty hive box on top of each colony and began constructing an additional hive stand. I hope that giving the bees extra room to grow their colonies well before swarm season will prevent their desire/need to early season swarm. Before peak Summer heat arrives, I hope to be able to do at least one hive split to increase my number of hives and add honey super boxes for Fall harvest😋.