Third week of February and we see the bees venturing outside and even feeding. The warm sunshine has woken the bees up from their winter slumber and they are busy taking ‘cleansing flights’ (that’s polite bee talk for ‘going for a poo’). In addition they are taking advantage of my snow drops which are in bloom, you can see below a bee has collected some pollen from the flowers (it is carried on the legs, you can see it as a bright yellow/orange colour). Pollen is the protein food for bees, if they are taking fresh pollen into the hive, then the queen has started laying eggs and the worker bees are feeding the young. Hopefully this means they are building up the hive in preparation for the spring harvest.