Opening the overwintered Hive

Photo credit goes to Kelly Bolthouse since my kids were not available the day of our April field day on April 22, 2017. Here is a picture of one of the frames of capped worker brood from the hive. It was a nice, sunny day in the 60's. It was a bit breezy, but the hive has a fence to break the wind, so it wasn't a problem. We removed winter wrap and the mouse guard. There were four buckets of sugar water on the hive, which were mostly still full. We removed those. There is plenty of forage now, dandelions, flowering trees and many other wildflowers. The hive had chimneyed up the center of the six boxes, but seemed to have a fair amount of capped brood for this time of the season. There was a lot of drone brood on the top, but below there was a lot of worker brood. This is the hive I will split with the new queens from Oliveraz Apiaries on our next field day on May 13, 2017.