Welcoming the spring

Last saturday was a balmy sunny day, so Tim and I went and checked the 4 top bar hives.
These were the weakest hives going into the winter, 2 of which were caught swarms from summer 2010, the other 2 being a split hive from spring 2010. We fed heavily in late autumn and on checking were relieved to find 4 colonies alive and seemingly well.

'Light Hive' was full of friendly bees, and with pleasure we noticed capped brood towards the centre of the nest, some of which was hatching before our eyes. Replacing the combs of capped brood and plenty of stores, we quickly closed up this hive. Brood needs to remain at 35degrees C, so we didn't want to leave it out in the open to cool down.

'Dark Hive', although busy with plenty of bees and stores didnt show many signs of brood rearing yet. I dont feel too worried about this as its early days, and again we only briefly checked each comb in order to preserve the colonie's heat and atmosphere.

'Their Hive' (so called because the bees chose to build comb across, perpendicular to, the topbars, making them impossible to separate) seemed healthy, with a good number of bees. We devised a method of picking up all the topbars at once to look from underneath. really quite difficult to see into the hive, but with that comes a level of satisfaction and something quite empowering and trusting about leaving a hive just to the bees... its 'their hive'.

'Our Hive' (situated next to 'their hive' but with straight combs) seems the weakest of the topbar colonies. with few stores and few bees, this is one we will have to watch closely as spring continues. one worry is that during the unpredictable spring weather, bees out foraging may get struck down by sudden drops in temperature as the sun goes behind a cloud, or unforseen showers... thus further reducing colony numbers.
We are considering whether we want to stimulative feed this hive. this would involve feeding liquid sugar syrup to the colony, which encourages the queen to start laying (therefore increasing colony numbers within a few weeks). however, we are trying to manage our bees with as little intervention as possible, so we are reluctant to use this option without consideration.

hopefully I'll get some photos up soon of our apiary.

it feels great once again to have been standing amongst whirling bees and smell their sweet homes, and a relief to find wellness and strength, after a long cold winter.