The Honey Bees Are Busy On This Warm Winters Day

I walked up to the garden today to take a look at my ladies and see how they have coped over winter. It was about 11 degrees out today, and so it is quite warm for a January, and so I was expecting to see a few bees flying about.

However, I was amazed to see almost all of the colonies flying about and generally busy doing what bees do. I decided to open up the hives one by one and check that they have enough food for winter and have a quick peak typically to see that they are looking healthy.

I don’t want to spend a great deal of time in each hive as they will be busy trying to keep it warm and opening the lid is not a good idea to do very often, but the winter sun was out and shining, so I was happy that it was good a time to look.

All of the hives were busy except for one colony, and that hive is the hive that we have stacked two supers under the brood box, and so the bees have a lot further to go before they can get out of the colony. When I opened the lid, I could see that the bees were happy and that they were not taking the fondant we were feeding them, which usually means they have enough of their own food stores.

I won’t be looking at the hives now for a couple of weeks, but I will be busy building new beehives for the forthcoming year and generally getting ready for what is likely to be a hectic year for us.