Warm Day on 1-30-2011

It was in the 50's for the past two days and bee flight on both days from ALL hives, on Saturday i checked every hive and added a sugar pattie to one nuc and a pollen pattie to the garden hive and on another nuc. The Garden hive by far is eating the most pollen pattie. Most are not even touching it, but its there if they want it... i also had changed my recipe a bit to add canola oil, boy does it work. keeps the pattie soft even after 2 weeks in the fridge or outside in a hive. Something to remember...

As a side note out of dad's 4 hives 2 are eating up the sugar patties very quickly. A pound about every two weeks atleast. He placed 3 lbs per hives on them yesterday... I believe these 2 hives are just "high up" in the hive as they are very heavy with honey sarting out and still are veyr heavy lifting it, id say around 80-90 pounds!!! They had 2 mediums of capped honey going into winter plus some around them in the bottom. But again i think the cluster has just decided to live high and thus running the chance and instinct that they are close to starving, which they could do if they dont go back down without feeding...

Anyway, here are a few pics of the garden hive to show how much they have eaten and how quickly they work the patties.