Perhaps the most obvious challenge living where we do is the infamous welsh weather patterns (or lack of them.) Like most places in the UK we no longer get 'proper' seasons and as a testament this winter has been frustratingly mild (very few frosts to help sweeten our parsnips and help our garlic and absolutely no sledging!) and exceedingly wet. This has caused us to have to undertake some emergency path constructions involving around six tons of gravel all having to be man and woman-handled around the garden just to enable us to trudge about without our wellies getting sucked from our feet.
That said for the last two days the sun has come out to play and already we feel like spring has really started. Yesterday was very warm in the sun and we are pleased to see that the bees have taken a few tentative flights from both hives. a very fast recent check indicated that both hives still have their respective colonies. As these are our first over wintered bees we've been keen to take a proper look at them however it is still a bit cold. After hefting the hives last week they still seem pretty heavy but just to be sure that they have enough food we stuck some sugar fondant on the crown boards as a back up for them. A quick peek this week looks like they are untouched...
Hopefully in another week or two it will be warm enough to open the hives properly and see how things have been going. It'll be good to identify the food that remains, colony sizes and guestimate the swarm risk. We are hoping that this season both colonies will need to be artificially swarmed so that we can start of another couple - we'll have to wait and see.
For now we've satisfied ourselves with tidying around the bee garden and throwing down a load of wild flower seeds.
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