With no days warm and sunny enough to do anything, I am left waiting for warmer days to see how the girls are doing. The smallest of the three hives had passed. When cleaning it, I found the queen, pictured below.
I'm not sure why this hive reduced so drastically in size before winter, as I had given them all the stores they needed, but it was most likely the small colony size that was the cause of their demise. We received some freezing nights in December and it has been a consistent stream of rain. I can't be too upset, as California more than needed the rain.
I got a really nice book, The Bee Natural History, that has great photographs and descriptions of various types of pollinators. It reminded me to post this photograph I took from this past July of a beautiful turquoise sweat bee (Augochlorella aurata) on from buckwheat flowers in the Klamath Mountains. I can't wait for spring!