Here’s a combined write up for the PTC and Woolsey hives and what the findings were when we conducted our quickie spring inspection. This is not the full spring inspection. I conducted the inspections very quickly to avoid chilling the brood. The idea was just to get a general idea on how the hive was doing and to identify any obvious problems as early as possible.

PTC Hive
This hive is in awesome shape. It had been a month since I last visited this hive and the bees had hardly touched the Megabee patty or the sugar syrup. This is good because it tells me that they have a viable food source. Indeed they were storing honey on both sides of the brood nest. The only thing blooming right now is Red Maple, so I’m assuming that there is ample forage available.
The brood nest was good sized spanning 6 frames with brood in all stages of development. Brood pattern was pretty solid as well. Forager traffic was high considering the temperature (low 50s).
I removed one of the division board feeders and changed the syrup in the other one. I also added another megabee patty.

Woolsey Hive
This hive is also in great shape. Both feeders were empty, and the megabee patty was completely consumed. Broodnest was a good size (spanning 5 frames to the depth of the super) with numerous eggs and larve in solid patterns across both sides of three frames. There were also new honey stores over the brood nest, indicating that this hive had also found early forage.
I removed one of the feeders and added another megabee patty.
Spotted 8 small hive beetles in this one. I’ll be adding a beetle trap on the next visit.

Note: Many beekeepers would question the approach of adding pollen and syrup while the bees have available forage, but it is not unusual (especially during the spring build up) for a hive to completely consume its stores over a few days of bad weather trying to feed the expanding brood nest. We still have nights in the 20s so I look at taking these steps as insurance. If they don’t need it, they’ll just leave it alone in favor of available forage. But if they do need it and it’s not there, the hive could suffer.