Spring around the corner

The forecast for next 5 day said that the temperatures will be around 0 Celsius degrees so I decided on Friday-23 February- to go to visit my bees and to give them patties. Arrived to my beeyard by 2 PM. The outside temperature was 14 Celsius degrees. First look to my hives.
The bees from all the hives, except one, flying. Coming back with load of pollen. I realized that somebody check 2 hive before me. The covers were removed and not put back in place properly. I was real happy anyway. Light a cigarette and watch them. It was a pleasure to t see them in hurry with pollen and perhaps a little bit of nectar. Star dreaming of future harvest. Stop. Check the hives.
As you can see in the photo they are ok. I did not check the dead hive. A think is sure they have plenty of food. I’ll check it next time.
I’ll start feeding from 1 March with sugar syrup 2 times a week. I think that the build up will be faster and the colonies will be ready for acacia flow.
Only one problem: I hope the winter will not come back.
About Romanian beekeeping. As probably you know from the first of January this year Romania joint EU. A lot of misconceptions. It’s not permitted to sell honey here and there. The extraction room must be so and so… The Agricultural Minister will fix the rules till July this year. I hope that the rules will be ok.

New Start, New Situation

Well, I did not write for a long time in my blog for two reasons. First all my Internet connection was off for more that three month because of the systematization of my area and second because I want to give up posting. Why? A lot of beekeepers friends asked me why I’m writing this blog and why I’m writing this in English. Few day ago I decided to write again despite of all incrimination. So let’s start.
First of all let’s talk about weather. The weather is going crazy. Here, it should be winter season, with minus degrees temperatures and snow, but looks like being mid March. Only for few days was real winter with the temperatures around –4,-5 Celsius degrees. We had a few with snow and few days were raining. My opinion there is no doubt that the weather is changing dramatically. We can see everyday on TV news about the global heating and dramatically change of the climate. The worst part of this situation is that mankind is doing nothing or few thing to stop it. I hope we’ll wake up before is too late.
By the reason of the weather changing the bees life is changing too. I did visit my bees in January 18, and the bees were flying like in March. The outside temperature was about 9 Celsius degrees I did give them candy as bonus for being good girls . A friend of mine checks 2 of his hives for brood. He found out that there are more brood as usual. He saw a lot of drones flying. If I remember correctly Steve Taber wrote in one of his articles or in his book that if you look in the hive you can find drones. Does anybody something about this subject? Because the last few days it was very windy I did go to my beeyard to see if there are problems.

I was lucky no problem. I saw snow in my beeyard.
Well, you can look to one thing from different point of view. This happened with Romanian join the European Community. I agree with this, because Romania is part of Europe and we do believe in European values. There are a lot of problems concerning this adherence. I know that in UE there are rules concerning beekeeping and this must be respected. Between Romanian beekeepers start a competition and Romanian authorities ,in my opinion, don’t do as much as we expected. I’ll tell you much more in next post.