No such thing as a happy hungry bee....

The bees have been active at almost every available opportunity in recent weeks, perhaps I was being overly positive hoping they were finding nectar whilst foraging.

There was certainly a lot of litter from wax cappings underneath the hives, suggesting that they were needing to chomp their way through some of what was stored in there.....

After yet another stretch of dank miserable grey days the sun was shining (with no real appreciable warmth admittedly) today so I decided it was time to investigate what is actually going on in the hives...

As soon as the roofs were off I could see it was significantly different to the last time I opened them just before Christmas....

For a start the bees were beginning to spill up through the holes in the crown board...

 

Bees tend to move upwards in the hive when they are looking for something to eat - the top of the comb being where they naturally prefer to store honey....

Lifting the crown board it was even more apparent that they were hungry....

Hive #1 today....

A good number of them have come up to look for food.  There is some honey in all that brace comb they built - but most of it has been licked clean and they have even chomped their way through the fondant boost I gave them, hence the straggle of clingfilm left behind....

And before Christmas they were all snuggled up downstairs and the comb was full of honey...

Hive #2 similarly all snuggled up and not a bee in sight before Christmas....

completely different story today...

I hadn't given this hive any fondant before Christmas, as it seemed as though every cell in that comb was packed with stores.  But looking closer today I realised that pretty much all of it had crystalised, so was likely to be ivy honey.

There's no particular problem in that - except that the bees need to add water to be able to consume it, and if they can't get out of the hive, because of bad weather to get some water they can quickly be in trouble.  There was nothing else for it, I just had to chip out some of that comb and give them some fondant so I'd know they had something to eat...

Hive #4 hadn't eaten much of their fondant at all....

As soon as I started clearing away the empty comb it was clear why.  Just the slightest damage to the full comb and it started to leak still liquid honey.  I guess  these girls didn't find the ivy source, or didn't stock up on as much of it as their neighbours - anyway they certainly seemed grateful to lick some honey up today!

So there they are....well fed and hopefully happy now!