Not exactly inspecting my bees, but since doing the bailey combe change, I am up there every day feeding them. However, no matter how much I have tried to get my friends words out of my head, that I had done the bailey comb change too early and the bees would abandon the Queen and go down to tend the brood in the box below, I was having this repeated vision of my abandoned queen laying frozen and alone in the new brood box having died a slow and dismal death…GOOD LORD! So…. I took a sneaky look inside… naughty I know., but this time the temperature was over 18 degrees, the sun was shining and the bees were out in force. A quick lift of the lid revealed hundreds of bees busy in the new brood box. Hoorah! Now I can relax for the next couple of weeks until I remove the old brood box from underneath and shake in the whatever bees remain down there in to the new one.

A few more pictures can be seen on my blog.. of the bees bringing in the goods. It was like a busy day on the runway at Heathrow! I thought the honeybee in the last image, bringing home pollen, had rather a smug expression on her face!

I am delighted to have now heard from the gentleman with the colonies he has to re-home and I should have one those by the weekend which is very exciting. And, looking at the strength of the colony in the new brood box, once joined with the old brood box lot.. I am thinking I am going to have a superbly strong colony for the wonderful April and May blossoms that are just coming out.

Talking of which, I was out on my horse at the weekend and the Hawthorne is coming in to full bloom and beginning, from a distance, to look like the branches of the trees are covered with a light dusting of snow. It’s lovely, especially with the sun shining up against a beautiful blue sky. Lots more photographs to be taken. I can feel my shutter finger twitching at the thought! I am, as most of you will know already, a photographer.

I have just this moment returned from a talk at a lovely school. The Oaks, Primary Referral Unit in Amersham. It is a school that provides support for children experiencing significant social, emotional or behavioural difficulties in their mainstream primary school. I came home buzzing. These lovely children who, for whatever reason, have been excluded for a period of time from the main stream schooling system, really enjoyed the talk, and engaged with me. Their keenness to answer questions and be involved with the talk and of course ask questions at the end was fantastic. The Head of House said it was “spot on.” All of which nicely leads on to this weeks unanswerable question….. “What do the letters WBC stand for?” I should have known this.. well I do now. It is named after its inventor - William Broughton Carr - (note the initials) - who first published details of this hive in 1890. Voila! To be fair I had guessed that they were the initials of the inventor I just didn’t know the name. That’s my excuse and I am sticking to it.

Enjoy the images of the bees bringing in the pollen!

Note to self: Take proper camera up to the bees then I will capture better quality images..

THE QUEEN IS ALIVE AND WELL..