Bees flying in mid-winter

The temperatures got up in to the low 50s today which brought the bees out of all of the hives, doing some orientation flights hovering in front of the hives and going in and out of the hives.

Here bees land on the South hives.  This hive was probably the least active of the three, but was still quite active.

The top entrance of the South hive was also busy.

The middle hive was the most active of the three, with a considerable number of bees hovering in front appearing to do orientation flights, particularly when the sun was out.

The top entrance of the middle hive was also active, but most of the bees seemed to prefer the bottom entrance.

The bottom of the North hive was also active, favoring, as always, the far left side of the entrance.  Overall, I was quite happy to see this much activity mid-way through the winter, showing that all hives were still alive.  We do, though, have a long way to go before winter survival can be confirmed.

Fog on snow

There was a light fog early Friday morning as I left for work that was rather pretty.

The fog put a coating of frost on the weeds and trees that it touched, but it only coated the bottom three or four feet.

The path to my little apiary was coated in frost.

We had a snow fall of about four inches this week that coated everything and was partially covering the front of each hive, though there was still room for them to get out.

The snow as accompanied by some pretty cold temperatures so some ice had formed on the front entrance of the hives.  A few days later, though, the ice had melted and a few bees were flying from each hive with temperatures in hte mid-40s.