Bees On The Wing

Yesterday and today the weather was warm enough for my bees to take flight. I took advantage of the warm weather and opened the hive for an early spring inspection. First, I took the winter wrap of hay off the hive. I had reduced the hive to 3 supers for the winter. Going into winter, I had a very large colony and could not reduce the size of the hive down to two supers. I am amazed at how large my colony is this spring. The colony is the largest I have had in the spring after a long cold winter. I noticed the bees had loaded pollen sacs when they returned to the hive. Because so little is in bloom here, I gave the bees an early spring feeding of a simple sugar syrup.