Scent of hawthorn

[Amari]

Interested about your comment - bees could barely be bothered to flap their wings…is this cos they are hungry? I have a fair amount of stores in the super but bees were very quiet on inspection this weekend?

Maybe cos they're not hungry! All have benefitted from nearby oilseed rape, hawthorn, sycamore etc. First crop of honey taken off but plenty left in the hives.
One of the fascinations of beekeeping is watching colony busyness at different temperatures. In late Feb & March/April the bees will fly vigorously at 8-10C if the sun is on the hives and not windy. Yet last week @ 24C they could scarcely be bothered (to use a slightly anthropomorphic interpretation)

 

[Curly green finger's]

Maybe cos they're not hungry! All have benefitted from nearby oilseed rape, hawthorn, sycamore etc. First crop of honey taken off but plenty left in the hives.
One of the fascinations of beekeeping is watching colony busyness at different temperatures. In late Feb & March/April the bees will fly vigorously at 8-10C if the sun is on the hives and not windy. Yet last week @ 24C they could scarcely be bothered (to use a slightly anthropomorphic interpretation)

I was going through some hives at one apiary the other day and while finding the queen to mark there was sleeping bees on the edge of some of the frames, I touched one girly with my finger and said" its not time to sleep on the other hand you might of been out foraging at 5am.
Im with you it's nice just to take a half minute just to observe rather than getting on with a task..

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Interested about your comment - bees could barely be bothered to flap their wings…is this cos they are hungry?

I think it's more a case of bees not being stupid - if there isn't a flow on (or in the case of the gap, no forage worth talking about) most bees will either have jobs to do in the hive (nurse bees etc) or the main workforce will be mooching around waiting for the scout bees to come back with news of a nectar source - they are geared to conserve energy until needed rather than buzz around needlessly