Hello hello--an update from overseas!!! I'm presently over in Scotland doing some research in Edinburgh and preparing for a conference in Glasgow. A visit to Scotland has been on my radar for the past couple of years, so I'm extra glad to be over here at last. My previous plans always got axed because the visit kept getting cut down to the point that I would just continue doing work in England or Ireland rather than shooting up to Scotland. At last! Here are some pictures from Edinburgh. I leave for Glasgow tomorrow morning/afternoon.

Here is the National Library of Scotland where I've spent a lot of hours during the past week

I'm pleased to find that the library is actually in the middle of the sights and restaurants rather than tucked off in some corner of town--it makes it much easier to escape for a couple of hours of tourism without losing an entire day or something like that. So here is the view from Edinburgh castle hill:

And here is the National Portrait Gallery--I walk past it every morning on the way to the library. I would not have guessed that they would have a very respectable collection of Dutch and Italian Renaissance paintings!

Mostly I've been working with treatises written in the 1600s and 1700s here in the Moir Collection--but there were a few items published in the 1800s that were pretty great too. Hopefully it all works out well in the book!

Along with brood production, spring pollen gathering is another good sign of happy bees.

Looking around it is not evident where some of this early pollen comes from, but on nice flying days they start bringing it home. The brood need their protein to grow big and strong.

First things first. Are the bees alive and healthy? Hopefully they are because then they can proceed to produce the first frames of brood to start boosting the bee population. Getting new bees is important as the overwintered bees get older by the week. This also lets us know the queen is not only present, but doing what she does best, laying eggs.

New brood is a good sign for the survival of overwintered beehives.

It is nice to start seeing good patches of brood here in March. The weather has so much to do with how the bees come out of the winter months. And Iowa weather can be crazy in March. Well, actually about any month. Look at Jorge's post on about the 14th.
Overwintered Bees 2010.
In the course of about a week our snow has vanished and this week we have had days in the mid-50s for temps. There have been years when the first week of April was still in the low 30s.

And with the brood of course comes the emerging young bees ready to carry out the seasons honey and pollination activities.

New bees will also help the hives survive should we get any more un-bee-friendly weather. There will be some tree pollen that comes about shortly, but it will be some time yet before the dandelions and nectar become readily available.

The bees look good this March. The overall death loss will be +20%, but there are a number of good-looking clusters that ought to split very well. Some of the larger hives have a couple of frames of brood underway already, and the temperatures suggest that the brooding will get going pretty quickly this year.

Here is one of the overwintered hives from near Prairie City:

We didn't really get out to the hives until the beginning of March. The temperatures never really broke out of the high twenties in February, and we usually depend on a warm snap in Feb. to get the hungry ones fed when it is warm enough for them to put down the feed out of a division board feeder (we have a DB feeder in every hive). We probably could have saved several large clusters by going around earlier--the larger population hives can take the syrup decently even in the upper twenties. It always feels horrible to have a fine hive that dies because you didn't give it enough food.

When visiting the Prairie City yard, I did get to indulge in one of my favorite early-year adventures--digging bees out of the snow Several of the hives in the middle of the line are totally drifted over and out of sight.

And below we have some pictures after I have had a good time digging out the bees. Notice how the heat of the hives has melted away several inches of snow around the colonies--I basically just took off the snowcap to inspect them

Luckily, the bees don't suffocate under the snow, and a number of people believe that the snow cover helps maintain a steady temperature that ultimately benefits the bees. Still, I have to think that those bees were ready for a cleansing flight after being shut inside for three straight months!!

Hopefully your bees are looking strong too, but if you are looking to order 2010 package bees from us at Ebert Honey, I'll offer a heads-up that truck space is running out pretty quickly. Good luck with spring beekeeping!!