Here in the UK Midlands it is proving to be one of the most difficult and unusual years since I started keeping bees 37 years ago.

The winter was very cold - dubbed 'the beast from the east'.
That caused higher than normal winter losses.
More significantly, we then had a prolonged cold spring so the colonies that survived the winter, and were smaller than usual, had no chance to build up.  We just watched colonies dwindling week after week.
From 12 May onwards we had a month of winds from the north east - again very unusual and quite disastrous as the north easterlies turn off the nectar flow.  Oilseed rape, once our best crop, came and went with almost no crop stored; as it can be wind pollinated, the cool dry strong winds did the job and the flowers then dropped before the bees had the opportunity to work the crop.
After the incredibly wet winter with local roads frequently flooded, we are now into drought - everywhere is dust!
There have been almost no swarms this year - most colonies have not even built the usual cups along the bottom of the combs - never seen that before.
Drones have been very late to appear, so rearing queens and splitting colonies to re-build numbers has not been a viable option.  My first attempt, a couple of weeks ago, resulted in no cells raised at all!  Second attempt produced 7 out of 20 grafts (I would expect high teens).
Looks like we will have to treat empty equipment to prevent the wax moths destroying everything, then double up boxes to go into winter and just hope that we can make early splits next year.

Just a note on what we call lime and you call linden or basswood.  The flowers are open bells, so rain has little effect on them.  However, hot weather with drying winds will cause the nectar to dry up by mid-morning - and the bees can then get quite bad-tempered!  It really needs humid conditions.

Best wishes

Peter 
52°14'44.44"N, 1°50'35"W

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