Blue Bees

Cool! Blue pollen.

It's from the Scilla bulbs in the front yard.

Tele Update

It's been about a month now that I've been using the SolutionBee hive scale. It is a lot of fun to see what the bees have been up to!

The green is the temperature, orange is the weight. This is the data from the last week. The weight is starting to fluctuate more than it did in February. Some days there is a net gain but the overall trend is still going down. They do gain weight on rainy days from all of the moisture but I've noticed the weight go up a little on warm days too. 

There's lots of pollen coming in.

And what goes in must come out!

Almost Spring

I had a chance to have a peek at my hives last week for a quick inspection. Good news: all had brood and lots of bees. Two hives had about 2-3 frames of brood and one (a swarm from last year) was going to town with 4-5 frames. They were also starting to raise drones, too. That queen raised brood last year like crazy too but they never made much honey. We'll see how she does this year.

Lots of bees flying mid-afternoon this week. This is the hive with tons of brood. The other two aren't as strong and one has a fairly spotty brood patten. I'll have to think about re-queening if that keeps up. How? When? It's going to get really fun in the next month....  Swarm season is right around the corner! Might be a good time to make up some nucs and raise a couple of new queens? Let's go!