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Let The Blooming Begin!
It seems spring is springing already. The crocus are blooming and the daffodils and chives are poking up through the earth. Yesterday I noticed my bees were a little more active than they had been. Not only were they visiting the community feeder in my back yard but many of them were heading off, up, up and away. There were many, many bees crowding the front of the hive waiting for their turn to enter because I have the entrance reduced way down for the winter. I knew immediately what this renewed activity meant. Something was blooming. But what? I went for a short walk in my neighborhood and I did not need to go more than 100 feet before I found some likely suspects.
I am not positive but I think those are Pieris. They were in the front yards of 2 neighboring homes. I know what these are. Heathers. They were down on the corner of 48th and Pacific.
And I’ll be darned if this doesn’t look like a Chestnut tree, but it seems awfully early for that so I’m not sure what it is.
In any event my girls are on the job and bringing in pollen. And where there’s pollen, there’s nectar. The bees are finding forage. The following pictures are of different bees from my Carniolan hive. They seem to be collecting mostly deep gold pollen which means they are mainly visiting the same plants.
All except these girls, who are carting in some lemon yellow pollen. The rebels.
The Italian bees are bringing in pollen, too, but it is mainly the lemon yellow stuff. This is a very encouraging sign. Pollen in the hive means food for baby bees.
2013-03-02 16:10:02
Source: http://crazyoldhippiechick.blogspot.com/2013/03/let-blooming-begin.html
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