To Leap in to Life

A bright and sunny day and with a modest amount of warmth too.

If one needs cheering up one only has to go and look at the beehives.

I found the bees to be flying freely and there are clearly signs that the bees are out collecting pollen.

This is a good sign as it means that they are heavily involved in raising young brood and the pollen is the source of protein that is used to feed the young larvae.

If you look at the lowest bee in the picture you will see that it has a small round yellow lump attached to one of its rear legs. This is the pollen in what is called a pollen basket. Having adjusted your eye to that you can now probably spot the pollen on some of the other bees around the hive entrance.

All the colonies of bees have survived the winter and with the exception of one hive (which I am feeding with weak sugar syrup) all have a good weight of stores in them.

So everything in the bees' world is looking forward to the first honey flow in a few week's time.

Incidentally the yellow pollen probably originates from "Pussy" willow.