It has been rather wet here in Lincolnshire this March! We have made all kinds of marks on the soggy grass with the van, but that cannot be helped unfortunately. That said, on the few dry and sunny days we did have, we were able to get out and have a quick peek inside some of the hives.

Not unexpectedly, we found that the bees were rather hungry this month. After such a dry February and a big expansion of brood nests, the bees have not been able to get out of the hive to forage all that much this March, and so we have once again trudged up and down to deliver packs of fondant for the ones that needed it. We have not yet switched to syrup feed simply because temperatures have been fairly low and we don’t want to cause problems by giving a hungry colony food that they struggle to access in low temperatures. Fondant just sits over the holes in the crownboard and the bees can travel a short distance in order to reach it. As you can see from these pictures, this colony was particularly hungry! It is always amazing to see how the bees eat the fondant in a neat circle.

Another job this drizzly month has been to start filling up the brood boxes with frames in preparation for this year’s splits. We have tried to do a mix of drawn comb and foundation to give each colony the best start.

With the warmer weather due imminently, we are gearing up for an explosion of bee activity and lots of beekeeping!