George Clarkson asks:
<Does anyone know what my bees might be finding as a food source in
mid-January in central South Carolina.  On days when it warms up enough they
are quite busy coming and going and a lot of them are coming in heavily
loaded with pollen.<
 
>On colony I checked has stored about 2 deep frames of honey in the last 2-3
weeks.<
 
    Do you have any canola near you? That would be starting about now.  I
raised queens one year on 300 acres of canola.  That was a year when we had a
frost every few days that killed back bloom and set back the bees each time.
 But the canola was completely unaffected by the frost.  They were some of
the best queens I've ever gotten.  Lots of nectar and very high grade pollen.
 
    Down here near the coast, the bees are working wild mustard furiously
(really a wild radish, the botanists say, but that's its popular name).
 That's good for pollen (yellow) but not very much nectar.
 
   Today I saw one very strong hive that has put in about 15 pounds of
nectar.  But others in the yard had only a little.  I haven't looked at the
maple flowers, but it could be the beginning of bloom.  I've seen it blooming
by the 20th.  We haven't had much winter.
 
Hope it keeps coming!
 
[log in to unmask],   Dave Green, Eastern Pollinator Newsletter, PO Box 1215,
Hemingway, SC   29554