BeeBeeKa
House Bee
- Joined
- Mar 4, 2014
- Messages
- 282
- Reaction score
- 2
- Location
- Co. Sligo, Ireland
- Hive Type
- Langstroth
- Number of Hives
- 8 poly hives
Same here in Sligo, Torq. But I think it`s not because of lack of pollen, as there is a lot of gorse( furz ) around here. It was a nice and sunny day today(a small bit of rain afternoon though), almost no wind, but temperature was about 6`C.No pollen today though, it must finally be finished around here.
I noticed that at the similar conditions with the temperature over 8`C my backfast bees get proactive and bring plenty of pollen. With another strain of bees or at another altitude the situation at this conditions could be different IMHO.
I thought gorse pollen is something between brown and orange in color (light firebrick …as mentioned in wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollen_source) , yellow must be Ivy yet. It`s a shame furz has no (or very little) nectar ( I tried it`s flowers for a taste sometimes ) Otherwise we could manage to harvest some honey during lovely worm Irish winter sunny outbreaksSharon - furz bushes are in full bloom...
The bush has plenty of small yellow flowers that offers loads of yellow pollen that the bees absolutely love.
My garden heather (Erica) is also in a good flower. It started blossom on 1.10.14 (as my records tell), but I did not see any bee on it so far… They prefered Ivy.I have heathers out in full flower and there not on them .