I've been checking on the hives throughout the winter to make sure that there is activity in the day time. There are bees coming in an out of the Thistle entrance every few seconds, even a few are bringing in pollen:
No bees are coming in and out of the Mint hive... Thistle gets a lot more sun than Mint throughout the day, even though they are only a few feet apart. Thistle's temperament is also slightly more aggressive and they were always a bit ahead of Mint in terms of building comb and producing honey.
I'm not really prepared to break down the hive today - so I'll leave Mint's postmortem inspection for another weekend. Luckily this seems like it would just be a failure due to the very cold weather we have been having, so I should be able to re-use the Mint equipment (unlike with my first hive and the "Beepocalypse"). It usually doesn't get quite as cold as it has been over the last few weeks. The evening temperatures have been dropping to below 30 degrees Fahrenheit, and daytime temperatures have been in the mid 40s (which are approaching the record lows for Los Altos)
I'm definitely not as sad about the Mint failure as I was last October when my only hive failed; especially since Thistle still seems to be doing ok through this freezing weather. Once it gets a bit warmer I could split the Thistle hive so I have two hives again in the spring.
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