They're ALIVE!!!

My bees are not dead yet.  Both hives were out flying the other day when it was warm. 
The saskatraz hive, the stronger one going in to winter, looks to be doing quite well.
The re-queened italian breed hive (re-queened with a saskatraz brood frame) is barely alive, but struggling along.

The italians had a mouse in the hive a few weeks ago. I noticed that all the dead bees I pulled out of the bottom of the hive had their heads bitten off and I thought, "What the hell?"
I couldn't here anything going on in the hive even with a new medical grade stethoscope, so I popped the top of and there...on top of the bag of sugar (winter emergency feed is a couple of bags of sugar) was a little mouse nest.  DAMN and BLAST!  I took that out and lifted a set of frames but a few bees were moving so I quickly put the whole thing back together.  I figured they'd be dead by now.
But, they, like Gloria Gaynor thought:



We'll see how much longer they make it.

The community garden had HopGuard, a miticide (mite killer) available so I went and picked some up.  Yay!!!

The saskatraz were flying all over.  Quite a few bees out and about and a healthy loud "buzz" going on in the hive.   I saw one bee carrying out a dead bee and flying away to drop it further from the hive. 

Bees from both hives were coming and going with pollen, orange and yellow, in their thigh bags.

I see pollen on my alders but don't know where they were getting the 2nd type.  Still, it was cool.