Today I spent an enjoyable hour or so observing my twins cleaning out and checking the bee hives as well as rotating the boxes.  The sun was warm and lovely with only a slight breeze.  We found that one hive had a lot less bees in it than the other and that particular hive was dirtier than the other.   What a thrill though for all of us to see the bees flying back and forth, from who knows where, full of a light yellow pollen.  They were working very hard and the sun seemed to invigorate them.

There was still plenty of honey left within the hives which was a pleasant surprise.  They found no signs of mites and disease.  We were unable to locate any of the queen bees which if located would have been marked with a special marking pen.  It looked as though one of the hives had more bees than were observed several weeks ago, again a pleasant find. 

The plan is to observe the hive with less bees within the next couple of days and if we don’t see any brood production, we will pick up a new queen on May, 7.  We could have spent more time searching for the queen but the breeze started to stir and the bees did not like that at all.

Now, since I didn’t get this finished yesterday, the weather has turned cold, wet and dreary and it is supposed to last into the weekend.  On the good side, this moisture will bring the spring flowers.