The temps got into the 60's for the first time this spring and I decided to crack open the hive and see what was what. What it was was empty, of bees that is. The top photo is what I saw when I took off the inner cover. The middle photo is a sad picture of the last of the survivors. There were honey stores on the same frame and I've come to the conclusion that their numbers just weren't  large enough to build a survivable cluster. One day in early January the temps had been in the 50's and the girls were out and flying. That night the temperature dropped precipitously and the next morning the ground in front of the hive was covered with hundreds of dead bees. When I pulled off the top super I was shocked at how heavy it was. It was still full of honey and just about threw my back into spasms getting it off the hive and lowered. As soon as I pulled it off, I started seeing bees flying around. Even though I'd already seen that sad cluster of the last survivors I had hopes that seeing bees flying meant there might still  be a small cluster in the brood chamber. Nope, all I found were more dead bees. I left the frames full of honey and cleaned the hive all the way to the bottom, pulling the bees out who were stuck head first in the cells, scraping off brace comb and propolis. With the spring warm-up I'll need to collect the honey soon or the robber bees will abscond with all the gold.  I'm mulling over plans to improve my wintering over with the next hives. I'm going to start with two hives this year (one of them the top bar that J and I built) to better our  chances. I'm going to devise some sort of water proof cover to better insulate the hive,and I'm  going to try to find someone to build a nuc from bees that have wintered over in our temp. zone. I've even considered adding some Russian package bees to improve their winter hardiness, but I'm not sure about that. I need to do some more reading first. My first harvest experience has convinced me that the way I want to beek is with top bars. My back just won't survive hauling 80 lb. supers on and off the hive. Plus, judging from what I found, the Langstroth hive doesn't guarantee survival. I'm also going to change my supers from 10 frame to 9 which should allow the bees more autonomy in building cell sizes. It's so sad to think that I won't have bees in the yard until sometime in May, but I comfort myself with the thought that the robbers that so quickly materialized when the honey started dripping may have come from a swarm cast off from our hive last summer.
It was a sad experience, but still wonderful to smell the good smells from the hive. I'm pretty sure everyone I know is going to get a jar of honey for Christmas this year.