Winter.... from..... hell.

Winter of 2009-2010 was harsh. There was not a lot of snow, but it was very cold with several weeks of below zero temps. As soon as we could we went to check the hives to see how they managed over the winter. It was February and there was still snow so we used Kelly's snowmachines to get to them. (Beekeepers on snowmachines, I wish I had a photo of that!) What we found was not good. Our strongest hive was dead. We realized too late that we had taken too much honey from them and they had starved and died. The other hive, (the one we thought would die) had survived! They were very close to being out of food so we immediatley began feeding them and decided to get two more boxes of bees for 2010.