A little warm-up

The temperature warmed up to 50 this weekend which allowed the snow to melt quite a bit and made our lane a slushy mess.  Saturday and Sunday have been very sunny and feeling almost Spring-like.

I took the opportunity to check my bees.  It was too cold still to open the hives but all three hives were active with lots of bees making orientation and cleansing flights.  All three hives seemed to be equally active.  Here are bees hovering in front of the two south-most hives, using both bottom and top entrances.

The bees seemed to somewhat prefer the top entrance on these two hives, though.  Here are bees at the top entrance of the south hive.

Here are bees at the top entrances of both hives.  I am anxious to get a chance to see how much sugar they have taken but need temperatures over 60 to safely take a peek, I think.

These are bees at the bottom entrance of the south hive, with a lot of them hovering in the air in front.  Bees were flying all around the area, with very few dead bees observed.  They seem pretty healthy from what little I can see of them from the outside of the hive.

Here is the bottom entrance of the middle hive, also showing lots of activity.

The north hive was also as active as the others but all of the activity was at the bottom entrance.  The bees in that have don't seem to have found the top entrance yet, or perhaps had enough honey stores that they didn't need to push their way up through the sugar box to get to the top entrance.  I look forward to an opportunity to look into the top of that hive to see if they are on the sugar.