Don?t question your partner...almost lost queen

[Aroc]

We?ve been finally been able to go through our hive from overwintering.  Had one left yesterday.  These aren?t major inspections, just a go through, clean up and reverse boxes when necessary etc. 

This one did confuse me a bit as there seemed to be a good population but there was a ton of honey still and quite a few dead bees from what looked to me like starvation.  A very small patch of brood....maybe a hundred or so on a total of a couple frames.  Wasn?t so sure if maybe we had recently lost the queen. 

As we were removing old frames and doing a clean up, we started putting good frames and boxes back in place.  I really figured if a queen was in there she should be somewhere around the brood.  My partner, Alain known as my wife was grabbing some frames on the ground to use elsewhere and noticed a small cluster on one.  She said maybe the queen was in there.  I said ?naw,  she shouldn?t be on a honey frame?... I looked anyway and sure enough there she was.  By this time we had the hive boxes back in place so we unstraped it removed a frame an put her back where she belongs.

I hear a lot of these type of stories about a queen being somewhere you wouldn?t expect her to be in.  Lesson learned...listen to your partner. 

Still not sure what the trouble might be with this hive.... if any.  She was a slow starter last year so we might just be seeing the same thing this year.

[van from Arkansas]

Aroc, if you can over winter bees in your area of Mt you are a pro: high altitude, snow, insane wind, cold but oh my at the beautiful Country with knap weed honey.  If I understand you correctly, you are recommending listening to your wife and to the unpredictability of queens.  Both are good advice.

[Aroc]

Aroc, if you can over winter bees in your area of Mt you are a pro: high altitude, snow, insane wind, cold but oh my at the beautiful Country with knap weed honey.

Well I wouldn?t go so far as to say pro...we managed 11 hives overwinter with one loss.  I actually am fairly proud of that.  One thing is we do a lot of stuff people believe are unnecessary or in some cases detrimental, but it seems to work.