March 2024

Well, March was a bit wetter than we had hoped! The ground is still completely sodden and there have been quite a few days where it has been rather windy too. This has made for a slow start to the active season, and one where we are anticipating an explosion of activity on the first days of decent, sunny weather. 

It is difficult to get going at the moment because we know from quick checks this month that the bees are building up and using stores but we also don’t want to fully open them up when the temperatures aren’t high enough. We can tell they are using lots of stores from the cappings and debris underneath the hives. In general, the bees seem to be producing lots of brood but not expanding outwards yet, presumably because it has just been too cold. Hopefully with a few sunny days they will be able to start migrating out into the rest of the hive. 

One of the reasons we think the bees are building up so well now is due to the pollen supplements we gave them last month. They have eaten up all the Vitafeed patties and seem to have devoured the syrup with the SuperBee liquid supplement. We can see they have stored some of this rather than eating it straight away, from the clean-up job they are doing in the picture here. This is not nectar as there is no flow and the bees have not been able to get out of the hives enough to collect anything anyway.

Some colonies have also received this month an extra brood box underneath if they need the space. The reason for placing it underneath is so that we are not disturbing their access to food as, given the weather, we are still feeding from the top. It just gives these expanding colonies extra space to move into should they wish. 

As always, there are housekeeping jobs with beekeeping that are actually not to do with being in a hive and this month’s job was to start stocking the cabin with frames and boxes ready for taking off nucs and replacing frames. We use a trailer to collect everything up and take it down to the cabin, although we have to be careful not to get stuck in the wet ground. As you can see from the photo, we did this on a day which was a bit grim and grey, because at this time of the year there are always jobs to be doing with beekeeping.

Next month will be time to take nucs off, we’re hoping anyway!