First Inspection – March 19th 2009

March 18th and 19th have been warm and sunny – with a cool breeze – but in sheltered spots like my apairy the temperature has been above 15 degrees C – so it felt safe to open up my hives. I was pleased to see a queen in both hives and several frames full of eggs with larvae in various stages of development. However, there was very little sealed brood and the vast majority of the cells had eggs only one day old – so it looks like yesterdays warm weather really was the trigger for a step-change in egg-laying by the queens.  So, although I have been feeding the bees with generous amounts of syrup for the last week – and semi-solid sugar for the previous three weeks – it has not resulted in the queens laying lots of eggs.  There was very little pollen about until the last week – mainly snowdrops – but since the air temperature was so cool they have not been able to fly out to harvest the pollen.  It was interesting to see that they have actually been consuming the pollen substitute that I fed them a couple of weeks ago – but it looks like they have only begun to use it in the last week or so

Bees eating pollen substitute above the brood nest

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first-eggs-and-brood-march-19th-2009

Larvae and Sealed Brood - 19th March 2009