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Unless Scotland is completely overrun with vermin, I would have those mouse guards off. I actually failed to put any on this year apart from excluder strips on my apideas.

I noticed that. It's similar to the appearance when they are coated in oilseed rape pollen.

I'd estimate that it was 80% willow coming in today here with some fruit tree and maybe other stuff. They end up dusted in willow pollen if they're working it and often have some on the face.

Nice looking bees. Loads of pollen being stored at the moment - mostly willow I imagine.

There is one of the common varieties which always seems to produce catkins by the end of February but most of them wait till the end of March around here. There was a huge tree in the garden next door which always produced early catkins but unfortunately it was cut down last year.
The colonies I have in my garden are finding plenty of pollen. I will have to move them elsewhere by April - maybe just keep one or two quiet ones for honey production. I got 100lbs of honey of the colony in the garden last summer.

There is a long line of willow of the same type near the association apiary but, like most, it is at the silvery stage and not quite ready yet. It just seems to be the odd tree that gets underway early.

I have seen catkins here as well.
There is plenty of pollen about if the weather lets the bees fly.
Next week is looking promising.

Yep, mine also were enjoying the snow drops but had a very pale yellow pollen coming in too.

Mornings getting lighter, lovely pictures of bees with pollen all over their faces, it's certainly beginning to feel like spring is on its way.

Lovely photos. Ours were out on snowdrops, too, and activity at every hive (some more than others). Ponds full of noisy frogs. And a bat, in broad daylight, snapping up the dancing flies. Could we be in for an early spring?

Good macro photography Gavin.It's great seeing the bees at work again.Bit too windy with too much windchill here tho' at the moment.

There was no sign of pollen getting knocked off so I'll probably wait until the next big rush when the willow comes out.

Undercarriages go down for the final approach. Brakes, stabilisers, or both?

Lovely photos Gavin, time for the mouseguards to come off?

hi
that is the result after 13 days, & Carnica are the most common bee here. The final mite count should be after 3 weeks- so something might still fall. The colony was fairly strong - 5 frames the hive next to it was a bit stronger with 6-7 frames (mite fall pic below). Helping out my beekeeping guru as he is 81 - we saw about the same mite fall / frame in his 24 colonies. So I can say that seems not too abnormal for this area this year, expected losses are at 30% now for bavaria the mild weather is no good at all for the bees.. so far i lost two colonies to varroa from 23, the rest seem fine so far.

How many days drop is that Calum?
I never like to see that many mites but your colonies of Carnica are probably double the size of mine and can carry more mites.
One of mine dropped 150 over 4 days but others dropped none at all.
Not to be outdone by Jimbo, I distributed about 4.5 litres of Oxalic to members of Belfast and District at 3.2%
I have used Oxalic at this strength for three years and not seen any obvious ill effects.
I think only myself and two others have used it before but I did a talk on Oxalic back in October and the info was posted to the association website.
You need to use a bit of common sense as some seams are fuller than others so I vary the amount per seam between 3ml and 5ml
Even the strongest colonies are supposed to receive no more than 50ml even if they fill double brood.

no worries, seen worse. There are plenty of bees in the colony still, question is did I get enough mites?

Ooof! Did you catch them in time I wonder?

here was the result of my treatment, the average was about the same for all colonies on that site, impressive and worrying!

Sadly, there are companies in the UK selling a 6% mix which has to be higher than the optimum. I'll let you know what I make of the weaker solution but I don't plan doing detailed counts so it will just be an impression in spring time once they start making drone brood. Wouldn't think that the oxalic solution would denature on heating but I wouldn't heat it (much) after the sugar goes in. You're a good lad making all that oxalic. I give tubes of the stuff with a disposable dropper to a few others locally, but having seen such strong colonies yesterday I'm revising my view of how much you might need for a typical hive.

I use the 75g Oxalic 1000ml H20 and 1000g sugar and have done for a number of years with no ill effect noted. I also distribute this mix to all the members of HDBA with no reported ill effects. It is interesting to see some research on using a weaker mix. I may try this next year as I treated last week 11 colonies of various strengths from the weakest at 2 seams up to 7 seams. The amount I applied varies with approx 5 ml per seam so the total dose will be quite variable per colony. On my visit to Denmark it was stressed not to use too high a concentration of Oxalic and I was suprised to find a big city beekeeping association using from 4% up to 6%, that is when they were not busy gassing themselves and their bees by sublimation. When I am making up the Oxalic I do not use heat I just put it on a mixer until everything is dissolved in case the heat denatures the Oxalic