The Mismatch between Bees and Flowers in these Strange Seasons.....and News from the Lambing Shed.

On a frosty, sunny morning last week, I walked through the meadow where my beehives are kept to check all was well with them. After one of my hives was knocked over at the end of last year, I'm looking at the hives more often now. Luckily, both hives were still upright - and they also hadn't been attacked by green woodpeckers (the other worry at this time of year). When the ground is frozen, green woodpeckers will drill into a hive for an easy meal.

The Pussy Willow is about to flower - perfect for my bees

I watched the hives for a moment but, as expected, none of the bees were flying.  It was far too cold for them. Instead, the bees will be clustered together around the queen and they'll have sealed up their hive against the cold with propolis, a sticky substance (a sort of bee-glue) collected from tree buds. I've no intention of breaking that apart just to look more closely at the bees. I'll wait until warmer days.

The bees have been flying this winter when the weather has been mild. This has made me think about what they've been foraging on. Like everyone else, I've been noticing the early flowering of so many plants over recent weeks, such as snowdrops and daffodils in December and blackthorn in early January.  I was interested to read, then, the results from the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland's New Year Plant Hunt 2016.  Between 1st and 4th January 850 plant lovers hunted across the country for wild plants in flower and they found an astonishing 612 species. Botanists would normally expect 20-30 types of wild plants in flower at this time of year.

So what does this mean for my bees? Well, it has to have an impact. If the plants my bees love in early spring have already finished flowering before the colony becomes truly active, the bees have less forage. But then my honeybees are managed, and so if food isn't coming into the hive, I'll feed them sugar paste or syrup and pollen patties to boost them up. The real problem must be for wild bees and other pollinators, especially those that have evolved to appear when certain flowers are in bloom.

Tawny Mining Bee - emerges in April to forage on the fruit blossom (photo - The Wildlife Trusts, P Precey)

All this leads into the debate about climate change, of course - and the trends we're seeing.  A conclusion drawn from the BSBI survey, was that our understanding of when plants flower is out of date. I wonder if the next generation of botanists will have to start re-writing the books to identify new flowering times for our plants?  And perhaps we should expect to see daffodils at Christmas from now on.  Will it be holly and ivy and candles and....daffodils?

Still, there was no time to feel confused about the familiar signs of spring in the lambing shed (where the breeder of my Ryeland lambs has been working tirelessly delivering this year's flock).

Here, the lambs were being born more or less on time (although not always easily). When I turned up, there were already a handful of tiny, black, woolly bundles curled up in the straw (next to some very relieved looking mums). And more lambs were on the way. (Just to say, it was a little bit dark in the lambing shed, but I didn't want to use the flash on my camera in case I frightened the sheep).

This is a small flock - and those lambs that'll leave in the summer will also go to small flocks that are owned for interest, not profit. The lamb pictured in the last two photos is the latest addition to my own flock (he was just a few hours old when these were taken).

I'll be bringing him home in the summer, where he'll live out his long life as a gentle lawn mower.