Warm January Day

Still concerned about the survival of our bees this winter, I took advantage of the warm weather today to have a look at the Italian colony, which is the one that seemed to be in the most trouble. The good news was they are still alive!

This photo shows a rather small cluster pattern for a warm day, which confirms the lower population of this colony.
The most amazing thing was that there was now MORE honey stores than we had placed in the hive during the November 1st inspection, when we first noticed they were in trouble.


I counted six full frames about like this one mostly untouched in the upper box. Even those in the very center had not been consumed.

We were encouraged by these findings today and still hold out hope that both colonies will survive through the winter.

January Wildfires!

This week we had the Chinook winds, which are typical for this time of year. We had some wind gusts that peaked at 55 MPH and lost some shingles from the house. But these warm, dry winds also accelerated a local wild fire in central Boulder County. At a time when snow is usually covering the ground, it seems odd to have fires this time of year.

The Old Stage/Neva fire can be seen from our webcam snapshot above as the bright flare in the center of the image. Click the photo to see the full size, high resolution image.

The Daily Camera map below shows the exact location of the damage, which was about 8.6 miles west of our house.

Daily Camera News Story

Photo and video Gallery of fire

The Satellite image below is from the RockyMountain News story:

High-resolution DigitalGlobe satellite Imagery (PDF)

Denver Weather Examiner Story here.