We’ve had an interesting month here in Lincolnshire, with the weather varying from lovely, sunny days to frosty, cold, almost wintery ones. This has given us a slight variation in each colony – smaller ones have stayed smallish as the cold snaps prevent them from building up too much, whereas the larger colonies have made the most of their time foraging outside the hive and are building up quickly.

This month we have seen the bees bringing in lots of pollen. As you can see here there is even some that has been dropped onto the ground.

From those warm sunny days, we have also seen evidence of the bees building wax. As you can see in this picture, the bees had been feeding on fondant not long before and then suddenly with a bit of warm weather, they decided that it would be a good idea to draw some comb up and out of the hole in the crownboard!

The pollen patties that went down so well last month have now gone, with the remnants of the paper packaging being thrown out of the hive. It is really interesting to look at the entrance of a hive and on the floor around it to get an idea of what is going on inside the hive, even before you take off the roof. If you look closely, you will see shreds of white paper here on the ground:

Finally, one of the more exciting jobs this month has been to mark any queens we have been able to find. We find that it is a good time of year to do this as the colonies are only going to get bigger (hopefully!) and it is easier to find a queen in a smaller colony than in a big one.

Next month is normally our busiest time of year. We are about to see a couple of weeks of bad weather, but we are expecting that once the sun comes back out, that the bees will certainly be keeping us very busy!