Beekeeper Laurence Edwards reports a strong spring honey flow underway, with dandelions, bluebells, and horse chestnut driving intense bee activity. One colony expanded with a double-brood setup has already capped most foundation frames in three weeks, and Edwards expects the flow to continue five to six weeks more.
The spring honey flow is definitely here. You can see the bees going crazy in the background. I am right in their path here. They are going absolutely wild. We've got dandelions, we've got bluebells, we've got wild garlic, we've got horse chestnut, believe it or not, that's already in flower, back end of April. The colonies here are packing it away. This was the best apiary that I had last year in terms of spring crop and summer crop. They go really, really well here and they go All the way throughout the year. Unbelievable apiary, this one. In this video, I'll show you one of the stronger colonies here, and I'll show you just how much honey they're packing away. Right, it is carnage here today. These bees are going wild. It's about 16, 17 degrees. There is so much stuff just for them to go at at the moment. Wild garlic, dandelions, huge amount of bluebells, horse chestnuts in flower. These bees are really, really going for it here. This colony had an additional box put on about 3 weeks ago, overwintered on a standard national 14 by 12, and I've added just a standard National Deep on top. I've got it in a double brood configuration, so it's interspersed with a little bit of brood as well. But I'll pull out some of the honey frames that went in 3 weeks ago as foundation just to show you how crazy things have been this April. So this is pretty much what every single frame in this National Deep box is like. Some in this apiary that are a bit stronger than this one as well, but this is the one I've just got open. Probably third of the frame capped honey. Really, really heavy though. They've drawn all of this out. Remember, this was foundation that went on there, not drawn comb. If I put drawn comb on these ones, they would be at least 2 supers in now. The spring flow here is super, super strong, and we've still probably got like 5 or 6 weeks left of it. Our June gap around here, if we get one, tends to be like the first week of June, second week of June, and we've still got a week left of April. I'm predicting a bumper spring crop because the weather here looks fantastic. So there we go. I've seen pictures across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. Everybody seems to be enjoying a bumper spring crop this year. Make the most of it, doesn't come around all the time. I'm loving it, really, really do love this apiary. If you want to see what we did in this apiary last year, check out this video here where we got our bumper summer harvest from our Jolanta colonies down at the River Apiary.
