April 12 2022
It is now the middle of April and the weather hasn’t changed much. The last three nights it’s between -9C and -12C over night. The days have been sunny but it’s been windy and cool during the day.
At these temperatures, not many of my hives are out flying. It’s that time of year where you start worrying if you don’t see them all out and about. Three weeks ago I had four out of five hives alive. Today, I have one hive only out flying. I’m pretty sure the others are hiding out inside. It happens almost every year, I worry I lost them, but suddenly I take off the lids and there they are. So I am hoping thst will happen again this year.
Last spring my friend and neighbour got her first box of bees. She was pretty excited today to find hers still alive, hiding out inside. Her bees are spicy Chilean bees. I say spicy cause…..they are fiesty, hot tempered little girls. But even so I am happy to have more boys in the hood so my queens can be bred.
Keeping bees inside a rainforest has its challenges. Our weather can be extreme, more rain, more snow and cooler temperatures. On the upside, our landscape is very lush. Forest fires have less chance of running wild because of the conditions here. However last year there were some fairly close but thankfully they were knock back.
Also on the upside, we have tons of tree pollen available and acres of native flowers and wild fruit bushes
April18
Yesterday was a beautiful day but cool. It’s still below 0 at night and for a few hours warmish during the day. It is still very cool and very little melt on the mountains. But things are slowly coming to life. Pussy willows will be sending out pollen in a few weeks and the catkins on the hazelnuts will be appearing. But for now….we have to be patient.
May 11
I have been patiently waiting for a warm day to go inside the hives and do a spring inspection. But the days have been on the cooler side. So I have to wait. But the snow is pretty well gone and the bees are bringing in bright yellow pollen from the pussy willows. I have given them some syrup but they haven’t been eating it as all of them had some of their candy board left and some honey.
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| Beautiful willow pollen coming in |
I have a hive that decided going out the back of their hive is way better than the front. I had blocked off the upper entrance for the winter but they managed to wiggle their way up through the insulation and get outside. It was weird, all of the hives were busy coming and going but hive three wasn’t. I kept looking inside the hive to see if they were alive and they were always up top eating. Then one day I decided to open up the hive and check to see if there was a dead mouse on the bottom board or some other reason why they weren’t going out the front. The sun had come out so I quickly tore the hive apart. There was nothing on the bottom board so I decided to reverse the boxes so that the brood box was on the bottom. Thinking they would for sure come out the front. But nope…..they like the back door I guess. So once the warmer days come and I can remove the insulation I will turn the top entrance around so they can come out the front of the hive. I wished I would of had more time to check for brood but the wind had come up and it started to rain. So I did what I had to and closed it up.
May 19
Well I need to finish this up tonight. Soon we will be in full swing with the bees and the garden. The weather remains cool. The nights are barely above 0C most nights. And during the day we are lucky to hit 17C, on a good day. So many of the days hover around 10 - 13C.
Today we attempted to extend our hive stand out….but things didn’t work like we planned, so we gave up to rethink our plans. There were a few bees out today and were only bringing in a little pollen. But while walking home…I was excited to find two dandelions in bloom…woohoo. Soon the girls will have lots of nectar to bring in. And I can gather a quart or two of the flowers to make some honey dandelion jelly.
