Jon

Ok. I know it would read better if it were St Andrew's day update but today was a public holiday combined with a temperature of 14c so I got a chance to check quickly through a few colonies.

I was able to have a look at eleven in all with inspection time limited to 5-10 minutes in each case.
All had some brood and I saw ten of the queens including several of the ones I still have to mark. I will wait a few more weeks until I get a warmer day as there is no rush.
In one colony the bees seemed a little feisty and I saw brood after lifting out a frame so I closed it up without looking any further. I got a sting on the finger from this one which was the last one I checked.
No point in going against the flow.
The main purpose of the colony inspections was to check if there were enough stores present.
March is a critical month for bees as brood rearing starts yet there is little or no nectar coming in.
Bees consume a massive amount of stores when brood rearing gets under way.
The bigger colonies were actually lighter of stores than I had anticipated, so I gave a little fondant above the feed hole of the crown board. I put on a shallow eke and just placed some fondant with a plastic bag on top above the hole. the plastic stops it drying out.

One nuc which went into winter with less than two frames of bees was down to a cupful of bees but even this one had a tiny patch of brood.
The best home for a cupful of bees is an Apidea so I transferred them into one and sacrificed the small area of brood. There were a couple of dozen sealed cells so hopefully any varroa mites were in there. When numbers dwindle to this level the only value is keeping alive a laying queen.
A laying queen may well be useful at some point, and it is very easy to make up a nuc in May by taking a couple of frames of emerging brood with adhering bees from a strong colony and placing the apidea above the hole in the crown board with a sheet of newspaper in between.

I didn't see a single cell of drone brood which is the bees way of voting that they expect cold conditions to continue for a while yet.

I also planted two rows of early potatoes which is tradition around here on 17th March.