First full inspection of the year

All you read on Twitter and Facebook at the beginning of the month was that across the country fellow beekeepers were reporting that their colonies had died as a wet summer last year gave way to a cold winter that extended well into spring.

Flowers where I live are only just starting to bloom and my hive which survived the winter is now weeks behind where it should be at this time of year. I was feeding fondant up until two weeks ago but after the last feed I left them to their own devices and the colony are now out collecting pollen as the outside daily temp is finally above 10°c

I needed to check the brood to see how well the colony stands ready for the summer, but I waited until today before carrying out a full inspection as the temperature finally reached above 16°c.
There was two frames of capped and uncapped brood but the brood pattern wasn't good, not a lot of drone brood. There were lots of pollen stores building up and last years queen was seen.

No disease seen at all so all in all after the long winter it's a good start to the year for me and let's hope for a long warm summer.

I also managed to build a new base for the hive which has some hooks to attach a strap.

At last spring has arrived

I must remember not to stand in the bees flight path whilst I'm tending the bottom flower beds, yesterday I had a bee fly right into my left ear. Must have an odd experience for the bee but funny for the neighbours to watch me tipping my head to the left and banging the right side of me head to try and dislodge it. Instinct was to jam my finger in there, but I didn't want a bee sting in my ear. Especially as I have not been stung yet and would have been my first one, they say the first is the worst. Mybe I should do a controlled sting.

The bees have been in and out all weekend now the temperature has gone above 8°c, at most it reached 11°c during the daytime this weekend. Some bees were hardly able to make it back to the hive and by the end of each day there must have been a couple of hundred dead bees laden with pollen in front of the hive that just didn't have the strength to get back inside.

 

Most were bringing back yellow or orange pollen, but some were bringing back pollen that was a vivid blue, I gather that they must have found some Siberian Squill plants nearby as the colour resembled that on the chart on Wikipedia

 

I also made some lip balm from some of last seasons bees wax, I just added some  coconut oil and some peppermint essence, it's so easy to make I might make some strawberry as well.