At long last, a mild sunny day without much breeze. After days and days of cold, windy, cloudy weather this was enough to tempt the bees out in numbers for the first time this year. It was around 12℃ which is pretty good for here (55° North) in February. The first of the snowdrops are in flower only 50m from the hives so the bees came out to have a look.
They spent a lot of time in each flower so there must have been plenty of nectar. Most were collecting pollen as well. They also spent a lot of time grooming, sometimes sitting on the outside of a flower or a stem and sometimes hanging from the edge of a petal by one foot.
This time I used the flash which has advantages but makes the background dark. I put similar posts on my main blog in 2016 and 2015 if you want to have a look.
