I have not found any time to really post and give an update about my bees. Just a few weeks ago I got feed back from a neighbor , who expressed a bit disappointment, that I have not continued writing. So here I go.
First a short recap of 2016. During the winter I only lost one hive and started Spring of 2016 with 3 hives. I could not figure out why, but the new split ( white ) died during the winter. The year 2016 was the first year with more honey. The bees have enjoyed the flowers Christiane is planting and the 3 remaining hives developed relative strong.
All 3 hives ( red, green and blue ) survived the whole year and I did my first real harvest of honey in late July of 2016. The red hive had still an old queen, but the bees replaced her during 2016 in the summer. No swarm happened, but I found a new queen in the red hive. So I was fortuned to have 3 hives going into the winter of 2016/2017. I was very hopeful that all would go well and I was looking forward to an even better year 2017.