Yesterday was my first opportunity to go through my hives since September last year, when I more or less left the honeybees alone to hunker down for the autumn and winter. Apart from checking that they had enough stores by hefting the hives, treating them with Oxalic Acid just prior to Xmas, giving them some fondant icing to feed on in January and making sure they hadn’t blown over in the terrible storms we had, I have not seen them! And in all those events above the only time I actually saw them was, incredibly briefly, at Xmas. So, the first hive inspection is always exciting. Especially if, like I did yesterday, you find your honeybees alive, well and simply buzzing.

This is a very amateur video, I promise to get better as time goes on this year, so that you can enjoy my beekeeping year with me. Especially now as we are all in lock down. It’s nice to see the bees are busy preparing our fruit and vegetables for us for the summer and autumn harvest.

You will see when watching the video how happy I am to see my girls. I hope this puts a smile on your face too.

Enjoy!

Below are three images I took of the bees while doing the inspection.

1. The top of the frames full of young worker bees.

2. A glimpse of the pollen they are collecting.

3. The wonderful queen

All of these images, including the video is taken of my Green Hive.