OH Spring, where are you?

Although spring officially arrived March 20, 2017 someone forgot to tell Mother Nature. It has been cold, with temps well below seasonal. It has also been raining, a lot. Record rainfalls in fact. We were lucky the first week of April, temps were warm enough for us to do a quick inspection of our hives. Unfortunately in one of our bee yards someone had vandalized all eight hives there. Very sad to say but we think it was a fellow beekeeper. We went into the hives to find frames of honey missing, inner covers turned backwards, and some hives moved off their bottom boards. Luckily all hives were alive and we relocated them.

Our other bee yards all faired well over the winter with minor loses. On days that the temps were over 10 degrees Celsius, the bees have been out gathering pollen, building up their brood nest. I was lucky one day to have my camera with me to find some of my girls with fellow pollinators enjoying the flowers.