We're getting 60 degrees around here and I took a moment to check on our hives. It's looking to be a much happier scenario this year than last year when we had only two colonies. We had one that was weak that we thought would die and one that was huge and sounded healthy. By February, all seemed fine. By the end of March, both were about dead. Thanks to the help of Hans and a lucky streak in the weather, we're in a much better situation this year with our four hives. I'll post more later this morning, but here's a teaser from yesterday. I gave the girls some feeder pails and many foragers were out and about already returning with big baskets of pollen. I wondered where they were getting pollen? Trees I suppose. The only flowers I saw blooming were snow bells but I don't think there are enough of those out there to justify the bulbous baskets on my girls' legs. Here's a short video of happy bees on a snowy day:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHjgZb1wEE4[/youtube]