I wonder who is listening :).
Today is April 3, 2015 and the temperature in southern Vermont was around 60 degrees. The bees have been flying around these last few days of warmer temperatures. So I grabbed my binoculars, and took my coffee with me to my chair near the hives so that I could observe. I love to do this and this was my first time this year.
What I was surprised to see was them bringing in pollen! They were coming in with something orange, something white and something more like grey. The way they are working, I think there must still be a queen in there. I haven't interrupted them yet but I'm anxious to get a look look sometime soon.
I have peaked in when I change out their cedar pillows, which I did a week or so ago. I can't unwrap them yet nor pull out the cedar pillow...there are still cold nights so I'll hold off on doing that until end of the month or early May. Perhaps I'll do it when the new bees arrive.
The bees that survived the winter are my older Italian bees. The Carolins seemed to disappear after the bear strike last July.
Today, I checked the batteries for the electric fence and barely had enough charge to keep a mouse out of there so I changed the batteries. Last year, the bear came about the second week of April so I'm on red alert. I will need to check the batteries daily until I hook up the marine battery I purchased last week. I am waiting for a local beekeeper to come over and show me this first time so that after this, I can do it on my own. In the meantime, I'll use my D cell batteries that work fine for shorter times.
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