I went  to visit my bees today - the weather was perfect, still, warm, and sunny.  This colony was a nucleus colony I had acquired late  in August last year.  It was a bit of a risk taking on a colony so late in the season, but I was assured that so long as I kept an eye on them, and kept them well fed over the winter as they had virtually no reserves of their own when I installed the five nucleus frames into the 10 frame brood box.

I visit regularly, sometimes twice a week and I had noticed how active they seemed when I went to see them recently, but was reluctant to remove the device that makes the hive entrance very small. This acts to make the colony easier to defend against attacks from Wasps and Hornets (a problem in Autumn), and from invading mice, who love nothing better in winter to get inside warm hive and munch their way through the bee's wax and supplies over the winter months. Woodpeckers are very keen on bee products too, and so over the winter the hive had been surround in a coat of chicken wire to prevent them being able to peck through the hive sides and steal the bees and their stores.

When I got there, the entrance looked like Oxford Circus Tube in rush hour, bees trying to get in and out at the same time and huge great queues of bees laden down with pollen waiting their turn to enter the hive and deposit their load. They seemed to do it with good humour and manners, I didn't notice any platform rage!

Having seen how active the hive was and having opened up the entrance to allow free-flowing traffic, I decided now was the time to take a peek inside and see how my girls were doing. I only had a brood box on the hive, with an eke to supply them with bee candy as an extra food source to help them through the lean months. Having looked inside, all the frames were covered in comb, and were at various stages of brood development. I saw quite a lot of capped honey in the brood too, so it was looking pretty congested in there. I decided that now was the time to add a new super - an extra layer that would allow them to store all the nectar and pollen they were collecting, and hopefully free up some of the frames in the brood box for egg laying and raising brood. Failing to give the bees enough room might make them think they have exceeded their space and start to think about looking for a new home. This is one of the main reasons bees swarm, lack of space - so they head of with their Queen to find better lodgings. Not ideal for the bee keeper who has just lost the majority of their bees!

As you can see, my bees seem to have found a very good source of pollen. Flowering blackthorn and wild cherry plums are abundant in blossom at the moment around here as are the catkins and pussy willow.  It is possible  to make an educated guess at what the bees have been foraging on by comparing the colour of the pollen they are  carrying with a Pollen Chart.

I have got another hive ready and am hoping to set up a new colony sometime next month. In the mean time I am looking forward to watching this colony grow and thrive and maybe even harvest my first crop of honey come July!