First real warm weather of spring!

We have had a few nice days interspersed in the wet, and the bees fly out and gather pollen and nectar from the maple trees, however yesterday was the first real hot day and the bees were so happy! I checked for feed in the tops of the hives and they have gone down steadily, but not too fast. Today i will go into the hives and check on brood and comb. I will have to start thinking of the splits I will make and be sure that I have enough equipment. My goal is to have five hives at the end of the 2008 season.

Some things I see in bloom

Apple trees
Cherry trees
Columbine
Dandelions
Heathers
Oregon grape
Maple Trees (douglas maple)
Pussywillow
Rosemary
Serviceberry
Sorrel

A veritable smorgasboard of spring!

Bee-O-Pac

I sat and put together two supers of Bee-O-Pacs today. It was very easy. The only problem I had was some of the little holes still had their 'dot' in there and I had to pry them out before I could make the rivit out of the button side. They came in the mail from Betterbee, with good instructions and it took about 15 minutes to do eight frames.

The weather has been awful this week and I miss seeing the bees fly. Today is the first good day we have had, the bees are out and I will check their sugar suryp this afternoon. Last year I planted a mock orange just outside of the bee yard and this year it is full of buds. I'm not sure what all my bees find when there is not much in bloom but they say that it is maple trees, fruit trees and ornamentals. Later it will be blackberries and we have miles of them so all spring I feed the bees in case they cant go out because of the cold wet of the Pacific Northwest spring.