“They’re back!” I said excitedly. “Our geese are back! Spring is finally here!” We’d been hearing geese flying overhead for a week or so but none had landed, and hearing them honking at one another out on our frozen lake, determining who nests where, is our standard harbinger of spring. Two days later the cold snap dissipated at last and daytime temperatures approached double digits. Finally puddles are replacing slush and mountains of snow are beginning to shrink.
Spring brings with it a few bee tasks. These tasks should be done about two weeks before the first pussy willows bloom, the bee’s first food after emerging from their winter home. But how is a person supposed to know when the pussy willows will bloom? I guess you guess and hope you’re not too far off. Our guess was about two days before the geese landed, the warmest day we’d had, +9 in the shade. My husband opened the hive to put in a pollen cake and some medicated syrupy sugar water. To our absolute delight there were hundreds of live bees milling around. On a few sunny and warm winter days we’d seen the odd one flying outside the hive but now we were sure - they made it through the winter!
Task complete and the hive closed back up, next day we observed hundreds of dead bees outside of the hive! Oh no, was it too cold, did we do something wrong, did we kill them!!! But no, once it warmed up again live bees reappeared. There’s so much to learn, even with all the information we've gathered it seems like there’s an element of luck in bee keeping. Hopefully our luck will keep holding! Time will tell…
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