Bee-hive winter inspection

On December 28th we had sunshine and a balmy 12 degrees so it was ideal conditions for checking the hives at rosybee. We have 5 hives at present and due to the mild weather we have regularly seen bees coming and going from each hive. As very little is in flower this activity is not likely to yield much in the way of forage  so we fully expected them to have burnt through quite a lot of food, and they have. Two hives were very light so we fed them some of our excess stocks of honey to give them an very quick boost and the others got some candy where needed.

Amazingly, we did spot some bees returning to the hives with some pale buff-coloured pollen on their legs which shows the plants are also responding to this strangely warm weather.

pale buff-coloured pollen on the bee just entering the hive

We will check them again at the end of January and also do the oxalic acid treatment. We didn't do it last year and paid the price in very high varroa numbers so lesson learnt.