Today was our first chance to look into our bees. With the cold winter so far, there has been very little sign of activity at the front of the hives. We went into the winter with two hives but one was quite weak. We discovered a nosema infection which we treated but possibly too late to allow them to build up strength before the cold weather.

The other hive was very strong and had plenty of late himalayan balsam honey left on. They seem to be doing well but we gave some additional ambrosia feed today. This picture is looking through the ‘rapid feeder’ into the brood frames below.

With just one hive this year our focus will need to be on increasing this colony rather than honey production.