Season's up!

I was walking briskly along the road not two days ago (a dismal, cold day it was as have been so many recently) when a little honey bee flew past and nearly smacked me in the face, making me start. I smiled as she buzzed off, hopefully to her warm hive. "The season's coming," I thought.

Today, however the sun was out for the first time in as long as I can remember: a beautiful day with temperatures of 10+ celcius. At noon I headed up to my apiary to see how the hives are doing. I'd only been on site once since the start of December, and that just to take some photos of the snow-laden hives. And the results.....?

STUPENDOUS ! "Season's up!"

Both hives, especially Amidala, had a cloud of bees buzzing around. They've done it! They're through the winter and into March! I am, needless to say, delighted. However, I have read many times that March is a very common time for Northern Hemisphere colonies to starve, so I know to be careful still. I opening each hive up and quickly half-prized out one frame. The bees were not impressed and began bombing me immediately - perhaps I should remember my smoker next time even for small inspections? Anyway, from what I could see both hives had some degree of stores still in place, and the frames looked reasonably covered in bees. This is all terrific news. The question in my mind is quite when to give them a spring feed. Time to hit my bookshelves and spam a few local beeks for a check, though I am tempted to feed them this week anyway. Spring comes a little early in the London compared to much of the rest of the UK, and although I know it's important not to pump the colony with feed too early, I feel that in a couple of weeks there will be sufficient forage to sustain the growing mass.

Anyway, now I'm faced with the fact that the planning I meant to do during the winter never did get done sufficiently. Am I still going to run brood-and-a-half this year (it's not good, really), or perhaps I should cut back to single brood on Boudica and get a deep (14x12) on Amidala where the queen seems prolific (bit late now perhaps!), and what strategy am I planning for swarm management when I see those first capped queen cells? Hhmmmm, despite the fact that I find myself quite busy right now, I think it's time to get my bee-thinking cap back on to make this first full season one to remember.