On March 16th, I removed the bee cozy and added one medium super too each hive. Blue nitrile gloves worked great - fantastic zero sting outcome. Discovered many small hive beetles (SHB) above the inner cover which only fed my SHB concerns coming out of a warm winter. I also readied my swarm traps with new pheromone lures.
The bee cozys were kept off the hives for my beekeeping convenience - I unilaterally declared spring had arrived. In hindsight, bee cozy removal timing was too enthusiastic as March in Atlanta was cooler than usual. Using the Georgia Automated Environmental Monitoring Network data, I compared this year's minimum temperatures with two other years.
I'm fooled again - next time, I will ignore the NOAA spring climate forecast and watch the NOAA Arctic Oscillation (AO index) for short term Atlanta winter temperature trends. My apologies about the crude correlation of graphs - notice how the negative cycle of the AO index correlates with the cool/low 2013 minimum temperature curve. A few days after the removal of the bee cozy marks the lowest point in the AO index - oh well.
I'm fooled again - next time, I will ignore the NOAA spring climate forecast and watch the NOAA Arctic Oscillation (AO index) for short term Atlanta winter temperature trends. My apologies about the crude correlation of graphs - notice how the negative cycle of the AO index correlates with the cool/low 2013 minimum temperature curve. A few days after the removal of the bee cozy marks the lowest point in the AO index - oh well.
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