Warmer weather means active bees.
The weather is in a warming trend. Everyone with survivors should be checking the food levels in the hives every 10 days or so until the end of April. Food being sugar and pollen patties, because it's too cool for syrup until we're consistently in the 50's. The colonies will be building up exponentially as more and more bees emerge, and the demand for food will also grow exponentially.
Cold snaps will continue to occur and the nurse bees won't leave the expanding broodnest. Food should be directly above them so they can form a column up to it. If it gets real cold, the colony may contract and lose touch with the food. If it's of short duration, they should survive it. Two week ultra-cold snaps are what can freeze them out even when food is present, because the cluster contracts and they lose their connection to the food causing them to starve.
The Winter Survivors are not out of the woods yet, and won't be until May. A significant number of die-outs occur in March, often from starvation. I checked my lone survivor colony today and they haven't touched the sugar disc that's been in there all winter, or the pollen patty that's been in there for a month. I heard them in the upper deep and the super above it, with a louder buzzing in the super. Unfortunately I didn't have my infrared camera along, but I know they're nearing the top and building up their population. When it hits 60 degrees and isn't windy, I plan to take a deeper look and am hoping to see a nice patch of capped worker brood. But the inspection will need to be quick, no lingering until we're in the 70's.
The survivor colony is in the Eureka apiary so I'm bumming that I won't be seeing bees in the bird feeders and chicken coop this year gathering protein powder from the grains. It had been a yearly event that I looked forward to. (That was also the time of year that Kathy turned chicken tending and egg collecting over to me, otherwise it's her turf.)
Check the food stores regularly.
Gerard
