todays news

[gavin]

Beautiful weather today..............

From your competitor down the hill

I'd add Prunus pollen to that list. Cherry plums are either going over or in full flower. The odd dandelion.

T-shirt weather and I was actually a little hot in the cotton smock in the sunshine. Bees on up to 12 frames - some stronger than I'd expected, others weaker, certainly stronger than the association apiary which I went through superficially yesterday. Brood on 4-5 frames in the strongest but most have about two frames and are on the front half of the frames only (frames at rt angles to the entrance). Plenty of eggs.

1 Drone layer - died out in late Feb.
0 Queenless
1 2013 queen
1 queen not found (I'll get her next time)
5 2014 queens, green, one painted today and the others last autumn

A little sealed drone brood in the strongest colonies but hardly enough for that virgin queen of C4U's.

Amm-leaning stock of various levels of purity. One colony (visually the least pure at the site) pinged and followed - noted for early queen replacement. Even though I was out for a while no peeing on the wall was required, at any height.

Watched a few waggle dances and they were going surprisingly far. One just over 5 secs in the straight run, so going over 5 km therefore west of Glencarse.

Fantastic skies. Great spotted woodpeckers drumming. Amorous mallards flying about recklessly. Magic.

[Calluna4u]

Come on then Gavin. One hive was bringing bright blue pollen. What the heck is that in early April? A brighter blue than willowherb.

No prunus or cherry near the place I was working......only other white pollen would be from some later butterbur.

[Jon]

Great to have the 2015 season kick off.
I intend to do a lot of clipping and marking tomorrow if the weather is as good as predicted.
I have had a quick look in a lot of colonies and don't expect to lose anymore at this point.
Losses are under 10% this year which is great.
I also have 7 or 8 queens which overwintered in double apideas which can sort out any problem I might encounter.
I also have a couple of 2012 queens still on the go and those ones are likely worth taking a few grafts from as they survived that wipeout winter of 2012-2013 and are still going strong.
Some of my overwintered nucs are weaker than I would like and have only got a couple of frames of bees but they all have a laying queen laying normal worker brood pattern so will pick up from this point on. I was looking at a few of these with Gavin a fortnight ago.
A few of the bigger colonies have sealed drone brood so grafting should be ok from early May onwards.

[Jon]

blue pollen this time of year is likely siberian squill

[Calluna4u]

Scilla? You get a few of them here but this was in a forest site a long way from any buildings, and we had a fair amount of it in my fathers garden when I was a boy and never noticed the pollen was blue (the garden was over an acre and a 'fair amount' would be several thousand plants, but swamped by the amount of Chionodoxa on the same ground). Learn something every day. This was full bright blue loads, and the whole pollen arc was like the Ukraine flag...half blue half yellow......should have taken a pic.

[Jon]

The only blue pollen I ever see is the rosebay willowherb from July onwards. It's not a common colour for pollen so I reckon it has to be the other.

[drumgerry]

18/19C here in Speyside and like lots of you it seems my season properly got under way today with my first full inspections. Losses low again - just the one - although I have a few that are still not needing moved out of their nucs. Strongest on 4 or 5 frames of brood. Weakest on just the one. Willow in full swing here and the bees are working it hard along with any bushes of flowering currant they can find. Took a bit of honey off that I had left on as feed last autumn as I had left it a bit late with those colonies. Will be odd to be extracting this coming week!

[brecks]

Ceanothus pollen is bright blue, but I think the earliest flowering varieties are in late Spring.

[gavin]

Scilla?

Yup, I get some near Errol and there are usually scattered blue cells at this time of year. It can naturalise in woods usually beside old houses. Not sure what colour Chinodoxa pollen is but I have some at my front door so could perhaps find out tomorrow. For arcs of the stuff you'd need a big area.

You could of course watch the waggle dances to work out where they're going - more likely early in the foraging day. There ought to be a few dancers carrying pollen.

Phacelia also has blue pollen. This isn't the season for it, but it is used as autumn green manure so just maybe it survived to flowering. Get Jolanta to check it out - I understand she has the technology!

[Calluna4u]

definitely not the phacelia colour.........this was almost royal blue, perhaps even a little lighter. Chionodoxa pollen is white if I recall correctly.