Spring in the Beehive

With temperatures ‘soaring’ to 19.3ºC at the weekend it was a perfect opportunity to take another look at the bees and carry out a hive inspection.

Pollen

We had no real reason for doing so other than the fact that we are itching to get started with some proper beekeeping this year. The hives were looking busy from the outside with bees coming and going from both of them and those returning to the hives were bringing in lots of bright orange and yellow pollen with them, It’s never easy to identify exactly what plants this pollen is derived from, but I’m thinking that the bright orange pollen is probably from dandelions and the bright yellow is from willow. There is certainly a fair amount of willow around this area, and the bright orange of dandelion is quite distinctive.

Pollen was really the order of the day as far as the bees were concerned. It’s a good sign at this time of year seeing them taking so much into the hives as it is a sure sign that the queen is in residence and that she is laying eggs. The pollen is used to feed the larvae so seeing lots being taken into the hive shows that they have young to feed and that the number of bees in the colony should be building up. During the inspection we had several bees land on us with pollen sacs full to bursting. One here on my finger

Full Pollen Sacs

Full Pollen Sacs

And then lots on Morgan’s bee-suit

Bees with Pollen

Bees with Pollen

Inside the hive there was plenty of pollen being stored as well. The bees seem to only store one type of pollen in any individual cell, but I’m not sure if they keep certain types of pollen together in certain areas of the hive as well. In the frame below you can see sealed brood at the bottom, surrounded by larva at different stages of development above that. There are then what appear to be empty cells, but these will have eggs at the bottom of them. Above that are a few of rows of cells containing pollen. The bees keep this close to the developing larvae so that it can be easily used to feed them, and then just around the top corners of the frame was some sealed honey stores too. Pretty much just the way we like to see things.

Healthy Frame

Healthy Frame

How are the hives?

The inspection went well. One hive is a little low on stores and seemed to have fewer bees than last time we inspected, but I suspect this was purely because the weather was nicer and many of the bees were out flying. The other hive looked quite good with a healthy balance of eggs and brood, lots of pollen and plenty of stores too. We saw the queen in both hives too which is always nice to do. As usual I took over a little during the inspection, which I was doing without gloves for the first time to start with. I did relinquish the hive tool to Morgan towards the end though so that he could inspect a few frames. Both hives had barely touched the sugar syrup we have fed them over the past couple of weeks, so we left it with them and closed them back up.

We then sat and watched them for a little while before leaving them to it and getting on with the gardening. It’s great to see the bees busy again and doing what they should be doing. It’s still early in the year and anything can happen but we have plans to split the hives this year and hopefully end up with four colonies.

Now, plans and beekeeping don’t generally go well together as the bees tend to work to their own agenda, but so far so good and if the weather plays along then hopefully the colonies will build up quickly and be ready to artificially swarm quite early in the year. The earlier the better really as far as we are concerned as that will then give them more time to build up ready for next winter.

We have just discovered that the location we had for an out apiary may no longer be suitable though so we are on the lookout for somewhere else before we split the colonies. It’s certainly nice to be doing and thinking about beekeeping again though as it’s a sure sign that summer is just around the corner.

2 Responses

  1. Avatar forComment Author mum says:

    Looking good,I’ve found the queen…I think

  2. Avatar forComment Author Emily says:

    Glad they’re doing so well! Nice photos.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Avatar forComment Author

Alan Cole

Alan is a Freelance Website Designer, Sports & Exercise Science Lab Technician and full time Dad & husband with far too many hobbies: Triathlete, Swimming, Cycling, Running, MTBing, Surfing, Windsurfing, SUPing, Gardening, Photography.... The list goes on.

You may also like...