Spring is starting to show

The purple crocus have now bloomed for a few days and I have seen honey bees visiting these flowers.  Many of the early flowering trees, like the maples, are also breaking buds.

These white and yellow crocus are also in bloom.  I have seen bees at these too, both honey bees and smaller native bees.

A clump of moss is greening up in the woods sending up little tendrils.  There is also another plant sprouting up -- the white sprout on the far right side of the moss--which I think is a may apple just emerging.

Buds on the plums are showing green as they swell and prepare to bloom -- still some weeks off I think.

Leaves of rhubarb are emerging from the ground and just starting to unfurl.

I did a more thorough check of my bee hives today.  This is the weaker hive with just a few bees on the top bars of the top box.  They hadn't touched the pollen patties.  I did not in the course of the inspection though that some bees were bringing in pollen from some source -- a tan colored pollen.

There were a lot of dead bees in this hive and quite a bit of honey left.  A lot of bees died on the comb, or with their heads stuck in comb, presumably dying of cold or starving when they were unable to move due to cold.  I think that an additional factor was the Nosema, a dysentery disease, that weakened the hive.  I was somewhat surprised to find any brood at all but there was just a small spot of brood on two frames.  This is one of them.

This is the other frame with a little brood.  I did see some larvae too, so it seems that there is still a queen surviving in the hive, though I didn't see her.  I thought perhaps this was a laying worker, but if that was the case this would be drone brood but it doesn't look like it is.  The queen has a long way to go to build up from this beginning -- I'm not sure if this hive is going to make it or will just dwindle away.

This is the screened bottom board on this hive, with the screen almost completely covered with dead bees.  I tried to brush all of the dead bees off of the frames, and also brushed these bees off of the bottom board.  A lot of the bees died while stuck in the comb so I could not get those out on this quick inspection.

This is the other stronger hive.  I made the mistake of not properly replacing the cover on the hive covering the hive top feeder the other day, so bees had gotten into the feeder.  Luckily it was almost empty at the time so not too many bees drowned, but there were a lot of bees in this box with the feeder where there should not have been.

This is the inner cover that was on top of the hive top feeder.  It is covered with bees as well.  I shook and brushed all of the bees off of the feeder and the inner cover when I filled the feeder with more sugar water and replaced it, but a few bees were persistent enough to get back into this box and will surely drown in the sugar water.

This is how the brood pattern looked in the healthier hive -- with lots of brood and lots of bees.  I think that six of the ten frames in the top box were covered in bees and capped brood.  I saw lots of larvae too.

Another one of these frames showing lots of brood and bees.  This hive had consumed almost all of the protein patty that I had placed on top so I put another one.  Some bees were bringing in pollen but I didn't think there was enough available to feed all of the brood and the new bees.

One more frame with lots of bees and capped brood.  This hive is doing very well.  I found that all of the brood though was in the top of the three boxes, so I re-arranged the hive so that the brood box went on to the bottom to give the queen room to move upward as is their natural approach.

I encountered only a few dead bees in the first two boxes, but found this pile of dead bees on the top bar of the bottom box.  There were also white crystals scattered thoughout the hive which I believe is the remnant of the sugar block that I fed them over the winter.  As almost all of the honey was gone from this hive, they definitely needed the sugar bloc and had consumed all of it.

This is the bottom board of this hive which was also covered in dead bees, which I swept off.  I hope that all of the sugar coated bees don't attract the wrong kind of vermin that will disturb the hive.

I also checked the bluebird house in the garden today and found that they had constructed a nest that looks about finished -- no eggs yet though.  I had been checking it before and as of a week or two ago it had been completely empty.