Early Spring

Hello,

My name is Bohdan and I have been keeping bees for 3 years. I have three hives and my 10 year old nephew, Douglas, helps me.

We hope you will follow our adventures through the beekeeping year.

Our young beekeeper, Douglas, wearing his bee suit and holding sugar candy for the bees.

It is a bright day in March. The sun is out but the air is chilly. A few bees are flying, we can see them leaving and returning to the hive. They are looking for pollen (foraging) but there is not much about.

Some of the bees have been busy spring cleaning the hive, we can see dead winter bees and debris under the hives which the bees have cleared out.

It is still much too cold to open the hive and look deep into it. Bees work very hard to maintain a constant temperature of 35.5 degrees centigrade. If we opened the hive fully the bees will loose heat. They would then have to use valuable food stores to make energy and get warm. They would also have to reseal the hive with propolis to keep out the draughts.

There is a danger that the bees could starve before Spring arrives so we have put some sugar candy in the hives. We are going to look just inside the top of the hive to see if the bees are active and have enough food to last until the Spring flowers bloom.

If we are lucky we will see that the bees are busy.

We hope that the Queen is happy deep inside the hive and that she has started to lay eggs. 

See you next month. 

Bohdan and Douglas

Watch Douglas as he checks inside the hive

Douglas shows us the inside of a busy hive!