Planting bee friendly flowers

 I have planted  lots of flowers this Spring. The Phacelia is now in the bloom and there are so many Bumblebees as well as Honeybees visiting it.

I also planted Sunflowers, Borage, Calendula and Tagetes as well as 1 hectare with white clover. This will help a bit in this Danish mono-crop agro environment devoid of healthy biodiversity.

Modest honey harvest

 Out of 3 nucleus top bar hives that I supered only one went up into the supers and made approx 20kg of honey.

 This is the first time for me working with framed combs, I used to only crush and strain the top bar comb in the past.

 I have built this DIY honey extractor but it didnt work that well for me. It was shaking too much and some of the combs flew out of the frames.

So after this extractor failed to deliver I simply did the crush and strain

Pine has loads of pollen and no swarms so far

Our Pine trees are in bloom now and boy oh boy how much pollen these cone flowers produce

This is pollen from only 4 small cone flowers and there is lots still inside of them!!! I mean so much pollen from Pine flowers I would have never thought is possible! Great for the bees indeed :) To be honest I did notice some very light powdery yellowish pollen on their legs and naively thought it was a paler than usual Canola pollen which is golden-greenish. I had no idea Pine produces so much of it :))

One local beek already had one hive swarm last week so I expected mine to do the same but nope. My ladies are waiting for something which is fine with me. Now its rainy but next week should be sunny and warm so thats the time to be ready. I have 2 hives boiling with bees. I have never seen so many bees in one single hive before! They must have 2 Queens in there!

Dandelion bloom is over but the Honeysuckle bushes and Hawthorn is in the bloom now.

p.s. for those of you who read my æast post about the farmer spraying pesticides; I did report the guy to the officials and they are onto him since as they say its illegal to spray Canola when in bloom during the bee fligh hours. Its onlt legal to do it between 21h evening -3h in the morning. This guy did it between 8-10h in the morning on a VERY sunny day, a big no no! They will call me back with results of their investigation, stay tuned.