Bees... New bees

Well, I did a cursory check of the hive, it's not doing good. There is a small knot of bees left, but I doubt they can bring the hive back up to strength. So I put in an order for 2 packages, 1 is Italians (which these were), the other will be Carniolans.

I've been considering making some changes to how I do the hives:

• use a screened bottom board for mite control
• use followers to encourage them to build better
• close off the bottom entrance and put in an upper entrance, probably just remove part of the inner cover
• use only medium boxes for both brood and honey
• considering leaving the 2 hives in the garage and putting a gate across the front
  or
• setup an enclosed chainlink dog run. Hopefully it would be bear proof if I beef it up a bit
• either way I'll need to setup an electric wire