BoxElders Still In Bloom

It was almost completely a bee day today. I got all my Spring inspections done at two of my bee yards and trimmed a bunch of brush that was over hanging the access road to the North Bee Yard.

I may have only lost one real hive (I am not counting that late September swarm it was doomed from the beginning) over the Winter but I suspect the other hives were scraping the bottom of the barrel so to speak. I inspected five hives today and each of them have more room inside then they need to say the least. Plymouth Colony, my oldest and largest hive last year had one complete Brood chamber drawn out with comb but almost completely empty so far.

I did not see one swarm cell being made yet so that tells me the girls have a long way to go to reach the proper numbers for a Spring build up yet. I still have five more hives to inspect so maybe they will show a bit more build up. We will see.

After the inspections I finished painting the last of this years new swarm traps and the first run of expansion bottoms and tops. I need to make at least another three or four tops with the modified openings but what I have done should get me through until June or so. Maybe longer if we have a slow swarm season and it is looking like the season is going to start later this year now.

When I got back from bee inspections I noticed one of the smaller BoxElder trees was blooming and had the characteristic (for around here) hum of bees in it. This time however I managed to get a few good shots of my Honey Bees working the Blooms.

Basically I pretty much just ambush the bees with the camera. I tried focusing in on them but the girls work the blooms so fast the camera can't focus in fast enough. So I focus in on a bloom and wait for a bee to come in then...snap...

The ChokeCherry, Crab Apple, Plum and Red Buds are all right there ready to bloom. In fact the Plum is blooming a bit here and there so the Spring flow should be going full tilt this weekend.

I probably won't do another post now until Sunday. I have a full day planned for tomorrow and then after it is over I am going to bump my computer up from the 32 Bit Windows 7 to a 64 bit version. I been meaning to do it for months now as I screwed up and grabbed the wrong version when I fixed this computer back in November I think it was. After I had it all set up I realized it was on the 32 Bit version...DOH.

Wish me luck...

Keep Prepping Everyone!!!!