As the warmer days of spring arrive so my bees are getting busier and busier. They are bringing in lots of pollen of various colours but mainly yellow and bright orange. It's fascinating because there is an almond tree within 2 metres of the hive but I haven't seen many bees on it.

The good new is they are expanding rapidly as can be seen from these two photos. The one on the left was taken on 23rd March and on the right 9 April. In just over two weeks the hive has gone from 5 frames to 9 frames nearly doubling in size. It's time I gave them some more space to store the nectar so they have room for the queen to lay more eggs in the brood cells.

[gallery type="rectangular" size="medium" columns="2" link="file" ids="6200,6201"]

<a href="http://pigyard.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/9Apr20-fondant.jpg"><img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-6202" src="http://pigyard.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/9Apr20-fondant-300x224.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="224" /></a>I think part of the reason for this sudden expansion is because I put some special fondant into the hive and has you can see from this photo they have made quite a whole in the slab. I intend to remove this over the weekend because I think they are strong enough and there's enough pollinating plants in flower now.

I hope you agree that looking after bees is a lot more interesting than worrying about Covid-19 and it's ramifications.