After two days of wind and snow, the weather prognosticators are promising us a week of 50-degree temperatures. Part of me doesn’t want to believe them. Another part of me desperately clings to every word they say.
A week — a whole week of warmth! This will surely push the skunk cabbage to bloom, the crocuses to sprout, and maple trees to swell their buds. The warm air, combined with sunshine, will push the bees out of their clusters and into the world for a little while each day. Spring is pushing itself up on its elbows, and out of bed.
It means that I will have to make sure the bees have plenty of food for the next week. Increased flight activity places a proportionate increase in their nutrition requirements. The month of March can make or break a beehive. Winter losses have been bad enough (for many reasons to be discussed in a future post), without compounding them with spring losses.
On a brighter note, today is the first session of our club’s annual beekeeping school – I will see a classroom of ready-to-take-the-plunge faces in about an hour. I also will order several new packages of bees today, to expand the apiary.